A long, long time ago in a galaxy... well, actually not too terribly far from where I am sitting now.
Mom and Dad both worked. And they had to leave me somewhere while they worked before I was old enough to attend school. It happens that the older couple they left me with kept chickens in their backyard.
And just about the meanest damn rooster you ever did see.
Well, at least that I'd seen by that point. Which, I will grant, since I was only three at the time wasn't all that many. However, I have never been chased, pecked, wing batted, and spurred like that evil creature did to me since.
Or as afraid of a damn bird.
Now, Moy (her name was Mary, but I couldn't pronounce that for some odd reason) was one hell of a cook. And she made everything from scratch. A meal from Moy's hands might be started sometime just after breakfast to be on the table at lunchtime. And it was all so very good.
But, my absolute favorite was her chicken and dumplings. While the chicken (fresh from the backyard) was boiling, she would roll out what basically amounted to a pie crust and then slice it into strips to make the dumplings...
Ok, now my mouth is watering for chicken and dumplings...
But, just how she made the dish is largely irrelevant. What is relevant is that I developed a liking for that dish that almost bordered on a food fetish.
However, never did I relish that particular dish so much as a few months into my staying with them, that rooster got a better than usual piece of me. And ended up in the pot.
Revenge, it seems, is a dish not best served cold, but boiled. And with dumplings.
Time went on, as it has a tendency to do. And that rooster became a distant memory. And then, not even a memory.
Until one day, I was reading a book in a series by Terry Goodkind and ran across a demonic (okay, technically a "chimed") "chicken-who-was-no-chicken."
The memory made me smile. And I happened to mention in passing to Love that I had a hankering for some chicken and dumplings.
Which she gladly and lovingly made. (Although her dumplings were Bisquick drop biscuits, I still enjoyed it very much.)
Yesterday, I was knocked off-line for most of the afternoon and evening. And, I decided to spend it sitting in the front room, at the dining table, with the window open to listen to the thunderstorm beating the shit out of the immediate vicinity. (Softball sized hail at one point.)
Fortunately, I had someone to keep me company and keep a ***cough*** weather-eye on the situation...
Deciding I was hungry... maybe something subliminal about sitting at the dining table... I whipped up a quick meal using some frozen beef and bean burritos smothered in a creamy spinach sauce. (I was in the mood for something other than my usual queso, salsa, or salsa verde.)
But, for some odd reason, I was really craving some chicken and dumplings. Or, perhaps not oddly as that is one of my go-to comfort foods even all these decades later and I'd recently been through... well, never mind. The important thing was that chicken and dumplings was on my mind.
And I thought about that rooster from damn near a half-century ago. Yes.
But!
But, I also remembered a recent conversation with a very sweet lady during which I was deep in my cups and also in a depressed spiral. And I lamented that I wasn't sure if it was this LDR folderol or if I just am not really a D-type.
I am. I know I am, when my head is clear. I know that I am a DD with Master tendencies. I know that I spent the most of my life being Daddy, Master, Owner, Top, pretty much PYL (PickYerLabel) for one particularly amazing woman (amongst **cough** others) I was also fortunate enough to be her best friend, lover, and husband.
But, that night, an afternoon spent in a furious rage over an explosive cesspool that should have been long left behind but had popped an aftershock had lanced some other repressed feelings that rather quickly spiraled out of my control (aided and abetted, I'm sure, by three liters of Sangria) and went places that I hadn't had a clue I would go.
The thing is, this gal is so countrified that I don't know anything for certain sure, but I'd be willing to bet my boots that she sneaks peanuts in her Coke while wearing straight-legged levis and flannel shirts listening to The Opry.
And, I know... I really do know... what she meant as she tried to soothe me and informed me that I am most definitely "a rooster in a henhouse."
At least I thought I did at the time.
But, sitting there at the table, listening to the hail and thunder, for some reason, I remembered that long forgotten rooster.
And started wondering if I really did understand what she meant...
After all, she's country enough, I bet she makes a mean chicken and dumplings too...
And I remember all too well how at least one rooster that acted an ass ended up...
