Just Gotta Be Me

Or maybe the title should be, What's Wrong With Me?.....

This morning.  Get the dogs up, push them out the back door to do their morning thing.  Turn the computer on.  Make coffee.  Push the hair down on my head that's standing on end, open the garage door and go pick up the morning papers. 

This is the one part of my morning I hate:  Picking up the newspapers, hair standing up on end, dressed in pj's.  Shit.  Don't want to be seen.  And I'll be damned, if it's not one person it's another who spots Bob dressed for bed nighty time out front of his home in broad daylight.  I hate it!   This morning the neighbor is out walking her dog just a few feet of where the papers are.  She spots me. Oh shit, I think.   She smiles and says:

Neighbor:  Yo Bob, you up kind of late this morning.   Looking good, bud.

Me:  Yeah, it was a late night.  I just wanted to sleep in a bit.

Neighbor:  Love your checked flannel pj bottoms.  You buy them yourself or did Wifey get them for you for your birthday.   I'd love a pair for my hubby.  Maybe he can borrow them?  I'd just love that.

Coy smile on her face.  I look back at her and think, Oh, no, I'm not going to do this, am I?

Back in the day when Bob was a wee lad, he could and still does a pretty mean impression of Louis Armstrong, Sachmo to most of us, doing I Can't Give You Anything But Love.....And I sing it like Sachmo.  Really, I do.  Doing this number at age 7 knocked 'em dead.  My Aunt said I should go into show business but that was never ever appealing.

So after the neighbor's last comment and for no reason what so ever (why, Bob, why do you do these things!), I break into I Can't Give You Anything But Love (and certainly not my pj's!).  And it's loud.  I belted out that mo dinger. 

Neighbor looks at me with the WTF look and I'm loving it.   I only sing a few bars of the song, do a little soft shoe along with it, pick up the papers, bow and head back to the house.

I don't tell Wifey cause she'll only get pissed and yell, What are you, fucking nuts?!  We have to live here!!  Why do you do things like that!!

It's not nuts that I am.  I just gotta be me. You know me and you know that.  And being Bob is always a hell of a lot of fun.