The Idiot

I went to Starbucks to get a coffee. I desperately needed one to get me through the afternoon. Work was totally uninspiring. With a – few - minutes to spare, I sat down and browsed through the sex-advice column of the local newspaper. I am a fan. I find it absolutely fascinating what people will come up with. Sometimes it’s sad though. People really are quite isolated, especially when they are in real kinky stuff living in farmland somewhere in some conservative town. Other times it seems that people simply need someone to talk to.

Anyhow, as absorbed as I was with the story of that girl who was looking for a way to leave her boyfriend for his sister, I started eavesdropping on the conversation going on at the next table. The guy was recalling with gruesome details, for the benefit of his buddies, an accident he had at work. From what I gathered, he was a house painter. According to him, while attempting to paint an unreachable part of the sunroof, he had removed his boots, and jumped on a tiny ledge to prove to his work buddies that – he – could do it. The glitch seemed to occur when he fell off the ridge and landed thirty five feet below, barefoot on a concrete block, breaking a leg and shattering his wrist. He apparently failed to notice the extent of his injuries until someone pointed to him that his femur was protruding awkwardly from his trouser pants and he was covered in blood. He had been on disability ever since, baffling the Inspector as to how he could possibly have lost his shoes in the fall. Since then, he had lost the use of his right hand and after several surgeries, still walked with a bad limp. The real funny thing was that now every time he walks through a metal detector at the airport, the alarm rings. Since he can no longer do that job for a living, he was considering going back to school. He wanted to become an electrician…