THAT'S LIFE: Natalie loves me, but how ’bout Rick?

— Actress Natalie Canerday loves me.

Well, that’s what she told me in the bathroom, anyway.

My father-in-law invited my husband and me to a roast and toast for Rick Dial of Malvern, whose first movie was Sling Blade with his old high school friend Billy Bob Thornton.

I knew it’d be fun, because Rick Dial is a big, fun, friendly guy. I first met him years and years ago when he was working at a furniture store in Malvern, and I bought a bookshelf from him. (As I recall, I haggled a little bit.)

Dial reluctantly started a movie career, and apparently, Hollywood has fallen in love with him. Robert Duvall can’t get enough of him, from what I hear.

It never dawned on me on the way to this event that other actors might be there.

I popped into the bathroom before the live auction started, and I saw a woman with slightly curly dark hair washing her hands.

“Are you Natalie Canerday?” I asked.

“Yay-us,” she said, with her unmistakable drawl, as if surprised to be recognized. “You look so fa-meal-yer,” she said to me.

I told her that I worked for the newspaper, and she said, “Oh, OK!”

Then I said to Natalie: “I just love you.”

She said, “Well, I love you, too!”

In my mind, that meant she KNEW who I was. Maybe she’d even read my column, I thought to myself. I was just so happy.

We talked a little later as we stood by the table where she was sitting with the Dial family, and she told me she was from Russellville. She also said she went to Hendrix (which I’d heard but forgotten), and we talked about the growth of Conway.

I told her the River Valley and Ozark Edition, a zoned edition of this newspaper, writes a lot about Russellville. She said something like, “Oh, yeah, I’ll bet.”

Translated: “I’ve never heard of that section in my life, and I’ve never read a word you’ve written, but I’m too nice to say that.”

She’d been in a play at Murry’s Dinner Theater in Little Rock, but the building flooded. Because the show had to be stopped, she was able to come to Rick’s roast, as well as her parents’ 50th wedding anniversary celebration. (Congrats!)

Natalie told me how she’d gotten a call from Billy Bob back when he was casting Sling Blade, and he rattled off a list of people in the movie. Rick Dial wasn’t someone she’d heard of, but Billy Bob told her Rick could act circles around the rest of them. (The actual sentence he said involves words I can’t use in the newspaper.)

During her hilarious roast of Dial, she recalled how someone once told her Rick had died. Natalie said she called the “one person I know who still reads the newspaper, no offense,” and waved her hand my direction.

Afterward, when I interrupted another conversation she was having (so sorry about that) to say goodbye, she asked if I caught her newspaper reference. “That was for you,” she said.

Ah, Natalie Canerday does love me.

Even if she doesn’t really know who I am.

I love her, too, and, by the way, I love Rick Dial. No word from him if he loves me back.

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