Hello, Chef

Let shorts season begin.

It was the third time this week I wore shorts on my walk but the first time I encountered someone bent on complimenting me.

Coming around the monolithic convention center, I started down 3rd Street, deciding mid-block to cross to the other side of the street.

Halfway across, I heard a guy calling to me from the side I'd just left. I continued to the other side and he hustled across the street to join me.

"Have you ever been told how beautiful your legs are?" he inquired. A time or two, yes. But it's probably been dozens of times that that particular line has been said to me.

He wanted to know why I'd crossed the street when I saw him approaching. Explaining that I hadn't even noticed him, I'd crossed because I lived in that direction and was heading home.

"So you didn't cross to avoid me admiring your gorgeous legs then?" he asked rhetorically. What woman of a certain age would mind being admired?

Extending his hand, he introduced himself as Preston and I asked if he lived in Jackson Ward.

No, he said, he lived in Shockoe Bottom and is a private chef to three people in the Ward (a menage a trois, perhaps?), to whom he'd just dropped off their lunches.

I gave him props for having been up, cooking and delivering already when all I'd done was eat breakfast and go for a walk so far.

All of a sudden the sun peeked out from behind the clouds and he exclaimed, "Look at the sunlight on those lovely legs!"

Well, he certainly was.

Explaining that I was going to go finish my walk, he stuck out his hand again. "I might need to start walking in Jackson Ward, too, with scenery is as fine as those legs are."

Exercise is good, Preston.

I didn't get four steps before seeing a guy who'd passed us a minute earlier, now paused to let his dog relieve himself.

Glancing up as I walked by him and the pup, he smiled. "He's right."

Praise be for shorts weather.