I was tired, damned tired. My feet ached, my shoulders were sore and even my eyeballs hurt. I really wasn’t used to working this hard and I learned on this fine spring day that I wasn’t interested in getting used to it.



I was nearly finished tearing every plant out of my front yard. I thought I'd be done in a few hours and it had taken me all day. And now, to top it off, my cocky know-it-all neighbor Carl had come home from work. I knew he wouldn’t be able to resist giving me his opinion about my yard. I should have done this. I shouldn’t have done that. Blah, blah blah, blah blah.



And sure enough, as soon as he got out of his truck he headed over to the fence that separates our yards.



“Tearing up the yard, huh Bill?”

 The master of the obvious strikes again. I wanted to respond sarcastically but the same damned thing that always happens when I see him happened again. He stood there, leaning on our fence, his dumb smile on his face, his shoulders popping out of his tight shirt and his crotch pressed temptingly between two segments of fence. I had to try not to drool.



“Yup. Nearly done.” was all I could manage. 

Ugh! I hated him for being so hot and making me crazy!



The smell. That’s what I remember best. Musty, heavy, moist - that’s the smell of the locker room of a professional football team. 



My only job was to watch and listen. I was a 19-year-old intern shadowing another wire reporter and was supposed to just watch and listen.



“Don't talk to anybody and don't touch anything,” he said as we walked in. 



“Yes, mom.” I thought. The scents were all around as I entered. It smelled like men. 



The security guard waved Mike, the seasoned reporter, right on in but he looked carefully at my press pass before letting me through. I had to rush to catch up to Mike who hadn't bothered to wait for me. He was a bit of a blowhard in the newsroom but as soon as we entered the sacred den he was all deference and respect. No wonder his articles read like a fawning review of a Texas women's auxiliary luncheon.