Take 8: A Pretty Penny

Hey Lady! If it’s not one thing, it’s another and our confidence doesn’t stand a chance against ourselves. Do you feel me? Gingersnaap was not pulling my chain when she discussed how we feel we’ve been hit with an ugly stick.

Two’s company, three’s a crowd, but an entire gender is a force to be reckoned with. Let’s be birds of a feather and flock together to appreciate the beauty inside and out.

There’s no place like home and my knight in shining armor was waiting with baited breath for me to return, but I looked like death warmed over with a face only a mother could love after running with the wolves.

He kissed me softly and said, “You’re as beautiful as the day is long.”
I shook my head and answered, “You’re just as sweet as you please, but I’m so ugly, I’d have to sneak up on a glass of water to get a drink.”

He stepped back and looked punched in the gut, so he pushed the envelope and said, “honey, you’re hotter than a two dollar pistol.”
It was just one of those days, so I shook my head and said, “I’m having a bad hair day. I have bags and baggage under my eyes.”

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I behold beauty,” he told me.
I disagreed and told him, “it’s a lot of empty flattery. I’m as ugly as a mud fence.”

Seeing is believing and I was seeing I’m ugly as sin. He was banging his head against a brick wall trying to put a square peg in a round hole. I put my hands on my hips to make a statement without saying a word.

Finally, he had had it up to here, “what on earth is wrong with you?”
“I’m facing the facts,” I said. “I fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.”
“That’s it,” he said to drive the point home. “If you don’t have anything nice to say about yourself, don’t say anything at all.”

I was stopped in my tracks. He wouldn’t give it a rest. He was bound and determined to convince me I’m hotter than a fox in a firestorm. I didn’t feel like the belle of the ball, but he made me feel like a princess.

I know he’s as honest as the day is long, and I started to bat the idea around and wondered if maybe I was fine as wine. There’s a first time for everything, and for the first time I stopped comparing apples to oranges. I read between the lines of my wrinkles and threw caution to the wind. It was mind over matter to take it and run with it.

It’s not easy as pie to see that beauty is a fading flower now that I’m old as dirt. I have pulled the wool over my eyes and refused to see the beauty that lies within, but the times, they are a changing, and now I see it as plain as the nose on my face, he’s on to something. I may be unlucky at cards, but I’m lucky in love and I got the luck of the draw.

♦

How about you? Can you see your beauty?

Aside – Please excuse my absence last week. It was the one-year anniversary of my divorce and I was working on another composition.

Previous Cliché Stories:

• Take 1: Cliché Touché
• Take 2: The Show Must Go On
• Take 3: Third Time’s a Charm
• Take 4: Shoot the Breeze
• Take 5: Birds of a Feather
• Take 6: Hold Your Horses
• Take 7: The Case of The Dancer Blaming the Stage