The truck was driving in front of me. It was a pickup in pretty good shape. I otherwise would have ignored it, but it had awkward letters on its back window. Written out in red electrical tape, the words read, “RIP Chris LeDoux.”

This is how I get my news when I’m on a news fast.

The truck turned toward the high school. I drove past it and headed to work. Chris LeDoux. I hadn’t heard those two words for at least three years.

I used to have a secretary that was obsessed with him. She was a happily married woman who was bored by the requirements of our secretarial position. She was creative and artistic and ended up making the flyers for the agents in the office. In fact, she was the only secretary that I trusted to make my flyers. She was far better at design than I was.

“Who’s that?” I pointed to the cowboy on her computer screen.

“That’s Chris LeDoux.”

She looked at me like I should know him. She was surprised that I didn’t. She went on to explain how great he was. She showed me at least six pictures of him on her computer. She didn’t say that he was a musical genius. She didn’t say that he had been a bareback rodeo champion. She just thought he was beautiful.

The name of Chris LeDoux was logged in my mind under the category, “Bored Secretary” and I didn’t think of him again until last week when that truck flashed it’s red electrical tape letters at me.

Here I am. I find myself three years later, filed in the same category as that good-looking cowboy. We’re both in the “Bored Secretary” folder along with fingernail files and nasal voices.

I don’t even like Country Music…