The other day I was due to be at a doctor’s office for tests earlier than usual and ended up at Virginia Hospital Center three buildings away in the wrong office. Seven weeks after my knee replacement I still have some issues getting around and use a cane outside the house. I was a long way from where I needed to be.
A kindly secretary arranged for a wheelchair and a volunteer to haul me to the right office. A quick look at the volunteer showed she was on in years. Once we were underway at a pretty fast clip, Louise announced she was 85 years old.
“Wow, that’s, uh, impressive.”
Louise jabbered a bit about staying in shape and helping others as she and I careened around a corner and into a long hallway. Her pace was picking up and I was growing concerned. I began to hear her panting behind me.
“No great hurry, you know, Louise,” I said. “No need to rush.”
“No problem. I’m doing fine.” Pant, pant, pant.
"Isn't there a speed limit in the halls?" I tossed my question back but it went unanswered.
Eventually, Louise screamed to a halt and deposited me in the right place. I discouraged her from trying to get me into the office itself and she went scurrying back in the direction we’d come from.
Thinking about Louise the speed fiend, led me to remember a man I used to work with, Sam. He was very popular and a successful salesman, but he was seriously absent minded. I always that he was a fraud.
Sam and his wife had their first son, and Sam went to pick up his little family from the hospital. He rolled his wife and son out of the building in a wheelchair and stopped out front.
“I’ll go get the car,” he said and left them at the top of a hill without setting the wheelchair brakes. His wife no doubt issued an ear piercing scream as the wheelchair gained momentum on its way down the hill. Luckily Sam caught up with them a quarter of the way down the block. No one was injured.
Sam is the only person I have known to drop his security card through the gap in an elevator floor. The custodians had to stop the elevator on an upper floor and muck about in the debris collected in the bottom of the shaft to locate it.
Elevator shaft.
We were at a party at a friend’s house. Several of us were chatting in the kitchen, including Sam. All of a sudden there was a strong smell of methyl mercaptan, the odorant added to natural gas for safety’s sake since natural gas has no smell. (Okay, I worked at the American Gas Association at one time.) There was a leak because Sam was leaning back against one of the gas stove’s burners, and his butt had turned on the gas. No one perished.
Auto prices had gone up and Sam decided he could save money by flying to Canada, buying his car there, and driving it home. By the time he got back the car was filthy, so he chose to take it through a car wash. Once in the actual car wash, Sam thought it was pretty cool, so he lit up a cigar to enhance his experience. After a moment, the car was full of smoke, so naturally Sam hit the electronic window opener. Both he and the car’s interior were flooded with soapy water, not to mention the harsh slaps received from the spinning brushes. Amazingly, he told this story to many people while I would have kept my mouth firmly shut.
Car wash viewed through the driver's window.
Sam was very excited when he and his team got the assignment to go to Japan on a marketing trip. He immediately started to think up more and more grandiose gifts to take, all with the company’s name brazenly splashed across the item.
I was able to discourage him from that path and suggested some tasteful items, including business card cases. I’d read that Japanese businessmen were crazy about business cards. We finally settled on a dignified item with only a very small company logo on the back.
The trip was successful. As they were preparing to leave, all of Sam’s team was settled on the airplane, when the security people started to make a last minute check on passports. Hmmmm, why was it only Sam who didn’t have his?
After much searching, it was found at the check-in station. The flight was delayed as the pilot dropped a string out his window and the passport was tied to it, to be hoisted back up to the cockpit.
All’s well that ends well.
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