A funny thing happened on the way to the Aid Mart....

One day, a very large man I’ll call Samuel came into Aid Mart wanting an air mattress. It wasn’t an unreasonable request, but they were at a premium at that point and I told him so. I explained that I was saving the few I had for the old and infirm.

He looked around. “Come here,” he said. He took me into the enclosed room where the meds were stored. Glancing around to ensure his privacy (which really wasn’t very possible), he said with some passion: “Infirm, huh? I’ll show you infirm.” With that, he unbuckled his pants and dropped both them and his underwear to show me an enormous scar on his rather abundant hip. “Artificial hip,” he said, with some passion. “Doesn’t that quality?” I guess I was too stunned to respond quickly enough. I was, after all, looking at a very large, very fleshy butt - another man’s butt.

“Need more,” he said? Before I could squeak out an answer, he dropped the collected garments to his knees to show me an equally large scar on his thigh. “Knee replacement,” he announced pointedly. “If anyone needs an air mattress, I do!”

I was now looking at another man’s butt AND....well, you get the picture. “Okay, okay, okay,” I yelled. “That’s enough! You win.” In the end I gave him two air mattresses, because I knew one wasn’t going to be sufficient to support all the flesh I had just seen. He hitched up his underwear and pants and, smiling, strode from the back room with his prizes under his arm. “I’m just going to grab a bit of food for the kids,” he said over his shoulder. “Is that OK, or do you need to see more?”

Samuel became a new friend and before I left Pearlington, I took him to my vehicle and gave him the beautiful, new pair of rubber, steel-toed boots I’d purchased in a WalMart on the way down. I hadn’t seen that much man-flesh since high school gym class and I hope I never do again.

Hurricanes make strange bedfellows.