Don't Talk to the Inmates or Believe Everything You Read

I've been known to play coy. Play stupid, if you will.

It's in my opinion that it takes a truly intelligent girl to play stupid. I don't do it on a regular basis, but the ability to bat my eyes and say, "My, I don't have a clue what you're talking about," does come in handy in certain situations. I'm not sure what those situations are offhand, but I'm just saying that yes, I've been known to play dumb.

Okay, one example.

Suppose someone is telling me something, and leaving me a lot of room to infer what they're really saying. That might be one time that I might say, "I'm really not sure what you're saying. Explain, please."

It's because I want whatever is being said to not be said in so few of words. Instead of coming right out and saying, "Spit it out," I do the gum-popping, hair twirling, la-la-la I'm soooo blonde" naive routine.

I was not pretending to be naive or dumb when I snapped this picture on Saturday, and then promptly locked the doors of the truck.

I'd ridden along to the salvage yard with my husband. He'd gotten out of the truck and nearly had himself an altercation with a toothless broad who declared she was next.

She wasn't next in line, but despite that, my husband let her go ahead and get her aluminum cans weighed. I half-watched, while eyeing any prospective inmates, when the woman in dire need of some dentures got caught trying to weight their bags with some wire.

I kept looking around. Surely if there were inmates working at the scrap yard, wouldn't they be wearing orange or had something indicating they were criminals? Maybe they were on work release from the county jail. Perhaps they were a low risk when it came to escaping. I wasn't taking any chances, however, and I kept the truck locked. My husband left it running with the a/c on. I wasn't going to be a hostage if I could avoid it.

"Why did you lock the doors?" my husband asked, giving me one of those looks that I'm slightly accustomed to getting in the last 18 years of marriage.

"I didn't want anyone hopping in," I told him.

"Ummm, okay," he said.

"I took a picture of that sign over there," I told him. I explained to him I was really surprised our youngest son didn't say anything about it when he'd rode along when we were getting rid of some useless junk.

"Oh, the inmate sign. He didn't even notice it," he said.

We were waiting on our turn when this conversation transpired, and I reached over and hit the automatic lock on the door again.

"Why in the hell do you keep locking the damn doors?"

"Uh, do I need to read you that sign?" I asked him. "Inmates, duh."

He laughed. He laughed hard.

"You know that's just a joke, right? There really aren't inmates working here. Sheesh."

How was I supposed to know it was only a joke? From the looks of some of the guys working the yard, they could've been inmates. Honest mistake showing just how gullible I can be at times.

My husband claims its part of my charm, though he still can't figure out how someone can be so bright (he says I'm always three mental steps ahead of him) and so naive at the same time.

Yes, I honestly did believe the sign was real. So much so that I took a picture of it.

I never have to play gullible, that's for sure.