Lottie’s words: Best, trade and ever

Lottie was laying out in the scorching heat at one of her local beaches, when she saw something that baffled her. It was a strange object in the water that was bobbing up and down with regularity. As the tide brought it toward the sand to her left, she decided to get up and walk down the beach. To her surprise it was a bottle,when she waded out to get it she noticed it had a cork in it. She was so elated that she yelled back to her friend, that was still laying on a towel next to hers, she yelled, “It’s a message in a bottle.”
Her friend yelled, “what does it say?”
By this time Lottie was running back to her spot with the bottle trying to take the cork out. When she sat down she thought the best way to remove the cork was to cut it even to the top of the bottle and push it in. The message read, “I like your hat.” This scared her and her friend, because this meant someone was watching them. At the bottom of the note was a phone number. When she was dialing it she was thinking it seemed familar, then the name popped up it was her long time friend Jim.
He answered saying, “hope I didn’t scare you, but I really like your hat.”
“Where are you?”
“In the boat about a hundred feet in front of you.”
“Don’t you ever do that again. You scared the hech out of me.”
Jim apologised and said, “he has a hat that would look real good with your bathing suit.”
She said, “come in and maybe we can make a trade.”
They made the trade and as he walked away he thought, “best trade ever.”

by Jim McDonald