1-Upper

Sometimes, I honestly hate true stories. This is one of them.

His name is Kenneth.
He's worked in the Post Office for eight years, the Military for twenty-five, and the FAA for five years.
I know all this because he told me.

Kenneth is a "1-Upper."
Everything anyone tells him, he has heard, seen, done, or smelled before.
Case in point:

Jamie- "Whoa. I went to bed at like midnight last night, then had to get up at 4:45am to come to work this morning. I'm exhausted."

Kenneth- "I woke up at 3:30am this morning and just didn't go back to sleep ever."

Jamie- "Oh."

*Pause.
*More pause-yness.

Later.

Jamie- "Weird. They're using only push-backs to move the aircraft out."

Kenneth- "I know. When I was in the Military, we didn't do it like that at all. We used Electro's, and...blah blah blah....more blah blah blah...

*Pause.
*Heavy breathing.
*Counting to ten.
*Somewhere someone in Asia is brushing their teeth.

Later.

Kenneth- "Did you know that they way they use their baggage carts here at Skywest is different than we used to use with our old prop planes?"

Jamie- *Blinks.

Kenneth- "Sure. What we'd do is we'd blah blah blah....blah blah....more blah."

Jamie- *Retreats to happy place located in a black hole somewhere.

*Silence at last.

I try hard to think of something he hasn't done before. Surely there is no way on earth -even if he was in the Military- he has ever sat in the cockpit of a B-1 Bomber.
What are the odds of that?
Very, very slim. Any other plane, whatever. I don't care. There's no way in heck he's ever sat in the cockpit of a B-1 Bomber. It's way to specific. Not even if he was in the FAA.
Take this, llama nest egg-stealer meanie.

So I tried it, and it worked.

Jamie- "When I was a little kid, my Dad took me up in the cockpit of a B-1 Bomber and I touched some of the controls and moved a couple of knobs when he was checking out the bomb bay in the back."

Kenneth is quiet for a moment. I totally have him. There is no way he could beat this.
I sat in the cockpit of a B-1 Bomber when I was a little kid. And I moved some of the controls around.
Ha.
Ha.
Ha.

A moment later, and I found myself grabbing a monkey-wrench and tearing into the side of a brick building with all the wrath and fury I could muster in my wrecked, destroyed little body.
The air grew smoky with cement dust as I savagely released pent-up frustration.

"Wow. I used to build those."


© J.E., September 2007