I don't know why, but it seems that writers to "Dear Abbey" always write their wackiest stuff when I'm spending time in Winter Haven, Florida. Dear Abby's column of August 24, 2005, in The Ledger, the most wide read, and best, newspaper in the counties surrounding Winter Haven, was a dooser! I brought a section of The Ledger home with me to share with you all (yawl). One of Dear Abbey's readers writes, "I am 62 and my husband is 93. Our next door neighbor, 'Sam,' likes to expose himself. Other than that, he's a good neighbor and always ready to help out." The letter writer goes on in some detail about how Sam is given to displaying himself (naked) in his doorway whenever he sees that she and her friends are available to be thrilled? (My words, not hers) She continues, ". . . he thinks it pays to advertise?" However, her main concern is that Sam might be waiting for her 93-year-old husband to pass away, thus creating an opportunity for Sam to rape and/or murder her. The lady asks Dear Abby is she should call the police, seeing as how Sam's "display" makes her uneasy. Dear Abby advises the lady to call the police, "immediately."

I should add that I first read about Sam at my sister-in-law's kitchen table. I read the column to her, a woman of wit, with a huge sense of humor. Between the two of us, we came up with several hidden motives the letter writer might have had, and we laughed so hard that it scared the dog, and caused poor Molly, a brilliant little terrier, to run and hide. My sister-in-law, a master of the English language, came up with several hilarious "word pictures," without uttering a single vulgar word.

I began my clumsy analysis of the hidden motives in this case with the "Freudian"approach to understanding both Sam and the letter writer. Obviously the lady is fascinated with Sam. I say that because if Sam is her "next door neighbor," as she writes to Dear Abby, she would have to meander, innocently, down her sidewalk, and turn round in order to see her next door wacko/neighbor, Sam, "in his doorway." That Sam was not across the street, is clear in the lady's letter. And her surmise that, "maybe he thinks it pays to advertise," suggests that the lady, in a Freudian way, agrees with Sam that he has something to marvel at, that is, she thinks Sam is a qualified "bank runner." The lady obviously enjoys the sight of Sam, feels horribly guilty about enjoying such a sight, and punishes herself with her imagined appalling future murder, at the hands of Sam, her tempter. And on top of that she connects her fantasy, and guilt, to the easily predictable, and subconsciously satisfying, death of her 93-year-old husband.

Let this be a warning to all men who are from 10 to 30 years older than their playmates (wives, one hopes). I've always thought it safer and sounder for men to marry women ten years their senior, so that the transition from real desire to disgusting geriatric mooching will be a smoother one. Women age a lot better, and look a lot better longer than their husbands. Don't believe me? Go to a class reunion.

By the way, I guess I should explain what I mean when I call someone a "bank runner." When I was a teenager, hanging around the cotton gin office on cold winter late afternoons, I would hear the older men, my father and his friends, allude to someone as a "bank runner" in his youth. I soon learned, without actually asking, that a bank runner was a young man so buoyed by his physique that he was ten times more likely to run nude up and down the riverbank of a favorite swimming hole than were his physically self-conscious, and perhaps awed, friends. A cotton gin office was a marvelous source of advanced education for me. Maybe that's why they had to force me to go to college, but I digress.

Let's look at another Dear Abby letter of the same date. The letter writer complains that her sister, Emily, is planning to be married on the date that their daddy died (he died many years ago, it seems). The complaint is that by choosing that date ". . . she's being selfish to choose a day that belongs to our father and make it her own." She goes on to write . . . "I would hate to see my sister heartbroken on her wedding day . . . " Dear Abby answered, "from my perspective, she has chosen a day that has been tinged with sadness and is trying to give it a happier connotation . . . more power to her." Dear Abby let the jealous little witchy letter writer off too easily. I suspect that because the father's death happened when the girls were "quite young," the letter writer has spent a lifetime blaming her perceived failures on the early death of her father. She's probably divorced at least once, or has a Dutch boy haircut, and a wart on her upper lip, and hates men. Furthermore, the calendar, being constructed as it is, makes it highly unlikely that their daddy's death date would ever correspond, in their lifetimes, with their father's actual "day of death." Additionally, the letter writer's saying that she would hate to see "my sister heartbroken," is actually the direct opposite of what she yearns to see. She really means, "I want to see my sister miserable." The chosen date of her sister's wedding is just a convenient excuse for her to gain the attention of the family on a day that should belong to the bride. The witchy (my first finger of the left hand struck another key, before my more mellow third finger found the "w") sister should have been told, STOP SEEKING THE SPOTLIGHT, [war of the fingers again] WITCH!

Finally, letters to Dear Abbey offer all of us that little bit of idle chatter, without actually talking with anyone, that we all need to get our juices going in the morning, and such harmless drivel offers us some blessed brief relief from the nation's real problems.

Kenneth Kinchen is an independent writer with a background in international business and foreign service contracting.