Addendum to Paul

Addendum to Paul

In the interest of total disclosure, I have to add this caveat to the story of Paul. A few years ago Jill Hunter’s daughter moved in up the block from us where she lived for about a year while her husband completed medical school. The result was that we got to see Jill at church every now and then. Just before her daughter moved I got Jill’s address and wrote up the story about her and Paul, thinking that she would love it. In fact, I could actually picture the family—her children and grandchildren--gathered around the fireplace on Christmas eve and one (or several) of them saying—after they had read the Christmas story—“Mom, please read us the story about you and that boy that you chased with the hatchet.
Well, a couple of weeks after I mailed her the story, I ran into Jill (now Jill Tingey) at the BYU Creamery. “Did you get my the story I mailed you?” I asked expectantly.
“I did,” she said in a very frosty tone of voice, “and I don’t mind telling you, I didn’t like it.”
“Oh,” I said in a disappointed tone of voice as the vision of her family gathered around the Christmas tree listening to my story went up the chimney with the rest of the smoke.
“It certainly didn’t paint a very flattering picture of me,” she continued. For one thing, I’m sure that I never in my life chased anyone with a hatchet.”
I was about to protest. I was about to point out that I distinctly remember the wicker basket by the door with the neatly stacked pile of wood with the hatchet lying on top. I was about to point out that she could ask anyone, she could even ask my wife, if I would ever in a thousand years remember such a thing if it was not deeply impressed on my mind. And it was deeply impressed on my mind by the memory of her stooping down and picking up the hatchet before she charged out the door with it.
As I say, I was about to mention all this, but I remembered that you only argue with a woman if you are running against her in a political contest and even then, only very very carefully, so I refrained.
I mention all this by way of admitting that the above story has not gone entirely unchallenged, especially the detail of the hatchet, and, of course, without that detail, the story is hardly worth telling.
I also added this note because I suspect that many, when I tell the story of my roommate, Craig Johnson, will suspect that I made the part relating to Jill Hunter up, or, at least, telescoped the time. But I did neither. I am much more certain of those events even than I am of the part in the previous story about the hatchet, and, I am quick to add, I’m pretty certain about the hatchet. And, finally, it not only happened, but it happened exactly one week later.