My Closest Companion has been making sure I get out and get exercise as I recuperate from surgery.

Even though I’d been out running a couple of errands Friday, she suggested that, when she got home from work, we could go out to the Gloucester County 4-H Fair for a short time.

I agreed it was a terrific idea. I told her I could sit on a bench in the shade if walking got to be too much for me.

“Oh, you can just schmooze,” she said. I scoffed at her notion that I would know that many people at the fair. I told her that I did not really expect to run into people I knew.

So, she drove my car up to the parking attendant on the way in. He read my vanity license plate and joked that she didn’t look like Jim Six. Turns out the first — the very first — person we ran into was a Marine who knows me.

We walked a bit and then I sat down on a bench outside a pavilion while my Closest Companion went inside. She went in and Chuck Gill came out. The former Gloucester County sheriff is a certified gardener now and had been manning a table inside since 7 a.m. He expressed concern about my health and we, ahem, schmoozed for a little bit.

Then we went for something to eat, where I was accosted by Paul Blackstock, who insisted he didn’t recognize me, because I’d lost so much weight, but that he recognized my Hawaiian shirt. Nearby, of course, was his better half, Bernadette.

I sat down at a picnic table while my Closest Companion got our food — and Mantua cop and good guy Jeff Leach sat down with his two kids. We had a delightful meal with them.

So, as usual, my Closest Companion knew best. I don’t know why I didn’t just nod my head and agree in the first place.

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