When I was twenty-two, I went out for a while with a girl who was four years younger. I had just finished college, and she was beginning. She asked me once if the age difference bothered me. I said it didn't because she was pretty sensible, and I enjoyed talking to her. Let's pretend her name was Mary. She worked at Amerigo. It was a friendly, zero-pressure relationship that I got into mainly because I was getting pretty weary of the sort of tensions that come from more serious relationships.
One weekend, I went fishing with daddy and some of his friends in a place called Hackberry Lousiana, where we caught our weight in redfish. Since I had so much frozen fish to take home, I gave some to this girl, who was living with her dad at the time.
As sometimes happens, my interests shifted from Mary to a woman a couple of years older than me who was beginning to make a name for herself as a painter. Mary and I remained friendly but never discussed why I quit calling. As she was super pretty and a lot of fun, It didn't take long for somebody else to fill my place.
About six months later, I ran into her at the restaurant that's now Broadstreet. After exchanging pleasantries, she told me that her dad kept asking when I would ask her out again because he wanted more frozen redfish.
In this business of keeping time with women, you fairly often find yourself confronted with a dad here or there. I've had some who were very glad to see me and some who were determined to get rid of me, but this was the first dad I ever encountered who just wanted more fish.