Body Language...

They were just two hard working old country fellers waiting patiently for their women folks. They weren’t even aware that there was another soul between them and Dallas.

But there I was not ten feet away waiting for the granddaughters to make one more trip around the sales racks. I had been ready to leave the mall thirty minutes before but when those two cowboys leaned against the wall and started whispering, I found a bench, sat down and didn’t care if the granddaughters took another hour.

It was not eavesdropping since I couldn’t hear a word that the two guys said to each other but I could figure out the whole story by watching their gestures and body language.

The tall, dark and handsome one was telling a story about two women…two fingers in the air and a strange gleam in the eye, along with a glance toward the dress shop next door to the arcade. That woman was endowed like a prime Holstein cow…two hands under the pockets of his pearl snapped shirt trying to support something very large and heavy. The other woman was built like an hour glass according to the hand gestures. She wasn’t every tall…one hand flat out and measuring about an inch below his shoulder. And she must’ve been wearing some very nice perfume from the way he waved his hand under his nose and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. His euphoric expression said that it wasn’t the fresh smell of road kill skunk that put that smile on his face.

Evidently these two women had gotten into an argument. I’d guess at a bar the night before because the other cowboy threw back about four imaginary shots. First it was push and shove, then a down right double-up-the-fist and sock-her-in-the-eye fight. I gathered that much because the feller reenacted the scene right there in the mall. He did a little jig that resembled something between the achy-breaky line dance and the electric slide with a little of the Elvis-pelvis thrown in. And I bet he tells his wife he doesn’t know how to dance.

About that time two ladies came out of the dress shop. Neither of them fit the description of the two women they’d been discussing. One was a tall redhead wearing designer jeans and custom made boots. The other could have been her twin only with blonde hair.

Did their wives…yep, both those cowboys were wearing wedding rings…know where their husbands were the night before when they were having a make-up party? I did overhear that much as they walked past me.

One cowboy winked at the other and told him to keep their whereabouts secret…that’s one finger laid across the lips. The other did the phone sign and mouthed something about next Saturday night.

They call it body language these days. I call it people watching or pure entertainment and fodder for my next book. On the downside, I couldn’t get “Achy Breaky Heart” out of my mind the rest of the day.