Smug

So, last weekend, whilst hiding out in the mountains, I struck up a conversation with a fellow barfly. We exchanged the generalities without being too specific. And, then we wandered into the type of intimate conversation you can really only have in college with a complete stranger at 3 a.m. or with a fellow bar patron.

She was mad at her husband. She said she loved him dearly, but she was mad. (order another beer) She explained that she liked to write short stories. She didn't write for profit or for attention . . . only for her own amusement and creative outlet. She said she's been writing stories since she was a child. Her children always enjoyed the stories . . . and a few of her notebooks had been swiped by her children to share with grandchildren. But, mostly, the writing was her own personal outlet.

She was mad because her husband told her that she was a bad writer and that she was merely wasting perfectly good paper with her nonsense. I asked if she'd kicked him shins, hard? She said that she knew he was just being a jerk . . . but still, since he'd said it, every time she sat down to write, she thought of the waste of paper she was creating and couldn't put pen to page.

She said it was to her husband's disadvantage, since when she has an outlet, she didn't spend quite so many nights at the bar.

That night, I fell asleep smug in the knowledge that The Phenom would never try to take something I love . . . like cooking . . . away from me for such mean and selfish reasons.

OH yeah, in tonight's Unfounded Story (see CNN . . . we could call my nightly talk show The Unfounded Story with Super Bongo) . . . John McCain may or may not have a tail and Obama jumps on the bed of every hotel room he stays in.