“Yep, that woman was tied to the bed without a stitch of clothing on. And the feller was unconscious on the floor, dressed up in a Superman suit. Damndest thing.”
Bob made this pronouncement in the lunch room of the university where I had a summer job cutting grass. Bob was my boss and a legend among the summer workers. The other full time employees were rude and insecure. Bob was humble and at peace with himself. The other men were vulgar; Bob was a gentleman. The other men never bothered to know your name; Bob made a point to know everyone.
He was also a legend because of his many quirks. He always clenched a pipe in his teeth, but he never smoked it. He hummed a distinctive three bar tune that he had made up. It went: hiiiiiii, hiiiiiii, hiiiiiiiiiiiiiii… It was in a minor chord and totally infectious. Most of us hummed that tune by summer’s end. And Bob only mowed grass in top gear. As he approached a tree at warp speed, his eyes would widen like headlights. Clamping down on the pipe, he would screech into a corner with the mower, barely avoiding catastrophe.
Bob had simple interests. He had been cutting grass at the university for 40 years. We took him for milkshakes on his birthday and you would have thought he won the lottery. He was devoted to his mother and to his childhood best friend, Nelson, who still lived on his street. He spent his evenings with Nelson on the front porch, eating Hostess cupcakes.
It was precisely from this location one evening that Bob and Nelson heard a woman screaming for help from somewhere on their street. They got up to investigate. When they located the house from which the screams were coming, it was locked. Bob got a ladder and he and Nelson went up through an upstairs window. They entered the bedroom and there was indeed a naked woman tied to a bed and an unconscious man in a superman suit.
Nelson covered the woman with a blanket and went about loosening her bindings. Bob called an ambulance. Apparently, as Clark Kent had leapt from the dresser to rescue Lois Lane he had misjudged the ceiling height and knocked himself out cold.
Bob finished his story. No embellishment. No sense of irony. The entire lunch room sat in silent awe. “Yup” said Bob, “Damndest thing. Well let’s get to ‘er”. He stood up, ground the pipe into his mouth, and headed out to his riding mower humming hiiiiiii, hiiiiiii, hiiiiiiiiiiiiiii…
[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them the link to WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]