Aunt Lottie and the Asthma Medicine

I heard the knock on the door and turned around just as Aunt Lottie popped through with her usual greeting, "Hey, Pat gal, you here?"

"I'm in the kitchen, Aunt Lottie. Come on back. I just baked some cookies."

"I thought I smelled something good. You can't ever tell these days, though, because people always using those candles that smell like food. Ought to be a law against such a thing. Every time I go over to your mama's house, it makes me want apple pie." She laughed as she sat down and grabbed a cookie off the plate. "Where's the coffee? I only got a minute."

"Here you go," I said as I handed her a cup. It was then that I noticed her outfit. "Why do you have on a McDonald's uniform, Aunt Lottie?"

"Got me a job, Pat gal. I'm looking around to meet me a man, and since so many old men hang out in the McDonald's all morning drinking coffee, I thought I'd see what the pickings are."

"A man? What happened to Fred?"

"I had to run that old coot off. He tried to pull a fast one on me, but he forgot who he's dealing with."

I couldn't imagine old mild-mannered Fred pulling a fast one on anybody, especially Aunt Lottie. It was pretty much all he could do just to keep up with her. "What happened? You two seem to be so good together."

She stopped eating cookies for a minute and pointed her finger at me and said, "He and them other old fools got where they hang around that little restaurant down the road from the house, and when I asked him what the big attraction was, he acted like it wasn't nothing but them talking. Then I found out they hired that floozy, Selma Johnson. And when I told him he was acting a fool because she's a good 20 years younger than him, he said I was talking crazy."

I thought to myself that Fred must have gotten some strength from an outside source if he called Aunt Lottie crazy. I hadn't known many people to be that daring.

"And then when I found that bottle of little blue pills he had hidden in his spare coat, well, then I knew for sure."

"You mean he had a bottle of Viagra?"

"Yeah, that Viagra stuff. So I held up that bottle of pills, and I asked him, 'Fred, why you got this stuff? I ain't noticed no big difference around here.' He looked at me with a straight face and said the doctor gave him that prescription to help with his asthma. I swear, gal, that man must think I came into town on a green bean truck." Aunt Lottie slapped the table so hard I thought the coffee would leap right out of the cup.

"For his asthma? I've never heard that one."

"So I told him he just needed to get his backside out of the house and stay out. Can't believe I wasted so much time on that old coot."

"Is that all he had to say, Aunt Lottie, that he was taking Viagra for his asthma?"

"Oh, he tried to say a lot of things, but when he saw I was reaching behind the door for my shotgun, he took off right quick. And all I can say is he didn't seem to be having too much trouble getting down the drive. If he does have asthma, I guess that Viagra must be working. I ain't never seen him move so fast." She laughed her hearty laugh and looked at the clock. "Oh, Pat gal, I got to go. It's just about time for the new crop to arrive down at the McDonald's. See you later."

And with that, she was out the door, leaving me, I'm sure, with my mouth still hanging open.