Well...last week's Hoodoo took all over the Bulldogs the way a duck takes to the water. Despite a slight deceleration in the second half that allowed the Bullies to nip at the heels of our beloved Crimson Tide, the T'Town mojo was high and the Hoodoo was strong enough to carry Blake Sims and Company to victory against the previously top-ranked Fightin' Walkens.
Now, the Tide finds itself in the most enviable of positions with only two weeks remaining in the regular American Rules College Football season...on top.
Thank Football Loki for the blessings he has cast down upon Alabama Nation this season after striking us low against the literarily-inclined hillbillies from Oxford earlier this year. In the depths of our depression, a light flickered bright on the horizon. Personally, I thought it was the bus that would be hitting us come LSU week. Fortunately, it was not yon purple and gold motor coach, but rather a beacon of hope in this, the inaugural College Football Playoff get-down.
Last week's test is a far cry from the pancake-flippin' the boys in crimson will enjoy this weekend against the road-trippin' Western Carolina Catamounts. I still haven't figured out what the hell a Catamount is, to be honest...and truthfully, I am blissful in my ignorance of the aforementioned wildlife (I assume it's a wildlife...sounds dangerous, but in a sissified way.) So fear not, faithful readers, after a week of high-tension, we get to enjoy the dessert of a late-season cupcake before preparing to do battle with the Boog horde from the East. When we beat the Lee County Booger Eaters' Association after Turkey Day, our card to the playoff will all but be punched, Football Loki willing. May Asgard rejoice!
So this week, I'm gonna go light on the Hoodoo because of some real life shite dropping in your illustrious narrator's life coupled with the fact that I don't want to shoot my best load with all that looms on the horizon for Bama. This week, I shall spin you a brief yet interesting yarn from recent memory...which makes it more embarrassing, in a way, than my tales of yesteryear. After all, I can always blame the past on the meanderings of youth, and there's simply no excuse for this one.
That said, I didn't really do anything wrong...I promise. Just one of those things that looked awfully bad at the time, and left me without an explanation for someone who thought she had surmised the goings-on like a tip-soppin' Sherlock Holmes.
But first, a little background. My wife works with an essential oils company in a contractor-type situation, sharing her love of these oils with others in order to pay for her own addiction to the sweet-scented perfumes of nature. These oils really work wonders, though the FDA would prevent me from offering them as a cure for any particular malady or another. As a practitioner of natural health in my own life, however, I've seen these humble distillations render relief where none had previously existed.
This summer, Mrs. OWB lived and breathed these oils to the point that I had tired of hearing of them, despite their beneficial properties. I'd mention I had a head ache, only to be greeted with "Here, I have some lavender oil, rub it on your head." Or, I'd mention that my cotdang lower back hurt so bad I thought I was birthin' a porcupine through my hindparts, and she'd say "Ohhh, here, put this rosemary oil on the soles of your feet." No thank you, I don't like anything but socks touching my feet, thank you very much.
The oils so dominated our conversations that my general response when offered to partake of their healing essence was to tell her I'd accept if she could just rub some of them thar oils on the tip of my man-piece. (Side note...I've since discovered that peppermint oil applied to one's man-piece is not comfortable, not comfortable at all. Makes one feel something akin to firing molten lava from the oculus of Herman the One-Eyed German, if you catch my drift...but I digress.)
It just so happens that this event I'm going to tell y'all about corresponds to a period in our lives during which we were without a mode of transportation, at least not one that wasn't grafted to the ends of our respective ankles. Our old trusty car had died, and I was unable to immediately procure another chariot for some time. While our fall walks to the nearby grocery store and dollar shop were pleasant enough, the winter in Mobile was brutal. Ice on the ground, sub-zero temps for days, y'all remember what it was like. We resolved that we needed another vehicle, but my pocketbook resolved that I would need quite a bit more resource-building before that was to become a reality.
Spring was okay, and we enjoyed seeing Mobile in bloom in the mild climes that followed. I considered the whole ordeal "class war training" for my family in preparation for the upcoming zombie apocalypse, and I took the time to advise them of the particular benefits of the Gulf Coast's native plants and critchters. In a way, it was a wonderful time for us, as my seven-year-old said "Daddy, I think we talk more when we walk...I like your stories." She doesn't know the half, nor will she. I've already blocked RBR on her tablet. (My son, however, read my LSU Hoodoo by searching "Ole Whistlebritches" on Google, or as he calls it, Koogle. Thank God that one was rather mild...I have since blocked him from the site as well.)
At any rate, things were Edenic, despite the specter of my impending RIF (that's corporate talk for lay-off...consider yourself warned) at the end of May. Despite our lack of what many consider a must-have rolling material possession, we were okay.
Then came June in Mobile.
For those of you who've never visited my fair hometown, between late May and September, one simply cannot go outside without risking imminent peril at the hands of the hummingbird-sized mosquitos of the southern Alabama Delta, or the oppressive, blanket-in-a-sauna wet heat of the Gulf Coast. It is brutal. The walk from one's car to the front door of one's destination can leave the forehead a sweaty mess, hair plastered down and dampness in one's sweaty parts. It is not attractive, to say the least. I believe the inventor of air conditioning must have spent at least some time along the Gulf Coast, as necessity is the mother of invention.
But I digress. So in one of these early summer jaunts, we elected to treat ourselves to a beautiful pizza pie from our local Mellow Mushroomery at the bottom of our hill. Fortunately, we live (or lived) adjacent to the University of South Alabama, and there are plenty of cool places within walking distance. (And just to note, by "cool" I am most assuredly not referring to the temperature.)
By the time we reached the pizzeria, it was sweltering. Cue the wife with the cotdang essential oils...
"Here everybody, put this peppermint oil on your forehead and under your nose...it will lower your body temperature."
Again, no thank you. The only thing worse than sweat is oily sweat. She, however, took her own advice and applied a liberal amount to her own darling forehead.
Now, because the damp, sticky air had heated us to a roast, our clothes had become a little clingy. Mrs. OWB was sporting a new brassiere, one of the push-up variety. Now, y'all know your narrator well enough to know that I'da never wedded a woman who wasn't amply gifted in the second story, and this bra was fantastic...made me wanna do thangs. But the one drawback was that in the humid conditions, the material would somewhat adhere to Mrs. OWB standard issue uniform, a scoop-necked t-shirt.
Such was the case on this particular occasion, and without thinking about it, after applying her oils she deftly and rather covertly plucked the clingy shirt material over her bosom away from the bra material in hopes of making it hang correctly. It worked, everything was in place and looking yummy.
But then I noticed something that, from her perspective, she had not considered...namely that when she made the covert pinch-pluck, she had failed to realize that peppermint oil was still upon her fingertips. And, of course, the evidence of such was visible in the tiny oily spots that corresponded beautifully to the approximate location of her delicate areolae.
"Haha," I chuckled.
"What?" she said, looking down while following my gaze from mine eye to her teats. But from where she sat, she couldn't really see what I saw.
"You have two tiny little oil spots on your nips where you adjusted your shirt."
She looked again. "Nuh-uh, I don't see them."
Being a gentleman and man of modern technology, I whipped out my trusty smart phone, and in a flash of ingenuity, I elected to snap a quick shot of her bosom to give her a glimpse of my perspective. Bear in mind, I did this in a crowded restaurant without giving it a second thought.
As I adjusted my camera angle and zoomed in on her bazooms, the thought never occurred to me that the general population would consider my actions untowards in a family setting. After all, in an act of chivalry, I was merely attempting to assist my beloved with her considerable wardrobe malfunction...I throw myself on the mercy of the Hoodoo court as an innocent man.
It was just as I snapped the picture that I noticed the waitress, our regular girl, approaching the table. I glanced to the side briefly, camera held aloft and close to my wife's tittays, and noticed that she, the waitress, was watching me as she approached. She shot me a smile.
"Oh shit," I thought. What would she think?
"Oh, I wasn't...I mean, I was doing her a favor...she has, you know..."
The waitress grinned, thinking she had caught ya boy in some nefarious act of debauchery. "Oh, no explanation necessary, I know EXACTLY what you were doing...(emphasis hers)"
I wanted to crawl under the damn table. This girl who'd waited on us so many times before now fancied me a letch of the highest order, no doubt. Every time she approached our table for the rest of our meal, I burned coal-glow red. I just wanted to finish and leave...but she kept shooting me that suspicious grin. I'd swear that girl wants me anyway (after all, she's only female), and after seeing that I was into "candid photography," I think she got a little hot and bothered.
At the end of the meal, she dropped off our check with a wink. In blue ink, she had written "Thank you...y'all are my FAVORITE family (again, emphasis hers.)
Geez, I couldn't get out of there fast enough, even though it meant plunging back into the hot tub of a climate we endure here in Mobile in the summer. I'da walked up 10 hills in that sweltering heat to avoid that kinda shame...a grown man taking tit-pics of his wife in broad daylight? Embarrassing. Such is my Hoodoo admission for this week, mild as it may be in the eyes of some.
We all know the Catamounts will get their asses mounted this weekend, so let's not further mince words...Roll Tide.