Shirley tells me that she once owned a horse that won the Kentucky Derby.
She says she had a doe living inside her house for two years until her husband said she had to let it go.
She says that after the deer peed on her throw rug she spanked it and it never messed in the house again.
Shirley says that her dog, Little One, is a beagle and that her five other dogs hate
Little One because she gets to lay on the davenport.
Shirley says she owns 19 sets of dishes and had to count each plate and bowl after her house had been broken into last year.
The thief had taken only guns, she says, 300 guns.
After her husband’s surgery, Shirley tries to kiss the heart surgeon on the mouth.
I sit next to Shirley in a hospital waiting room while doctors scrape from my wife’s womb our third attempt at parenthood.
Who can cry when a 70-year old woman is leaning in, spinning tales, yanking sleeves?
When Shirley says that she won three million dollars in a Coke bottle cap game but that she forgot her wallet at home and asks me to buy her two lunches in the cafeteria, I say sure.
There will be time for crying later.
