Her Name Was Margret Not Doris
Friday afternoon at 3:15, the time that I should be walking out the door, the phone rang here at work. Unfortunately, I answered and, to make a very long story moderately shorter, it was a crazy lady. Crazy Lady had a water leak in July of last year and has sent Huntsville Utilities letters and called them and sent receipts. Well, not according to the database that everyone is required to log stuff into. By 3:30, when she was still ranting about Huntsville Utilities even though I'd told her what I could do to help her, I told her that if she needed any other assistance I could transfer her to someone but that I needed to go.

Her (in sarcastic voice): Oh, what, do you get off work at 3:30?
Me (standard professional tone): No, I actually get off at 3:15.
Her: No! No! You told me that you got off at 3:30.
Me: Ma'am, I wouldn't say that. I always get off at 3:15.

Other things she accused me of saying was that I could give her a credit for her water leak without her sending in a letter. She also told me that she was friends with the Mayor. And toward the end of the conversation when she was ranting at me, I told her that she could talk with the director, but she "has a life to live and can't be bothered."

I issued her a credit today, without her sending in a letter (so she was partially right on that). In the comment field it says "Mental handicap/leak". She really should have someone less mean and crazy make her phone calls for her. But then they'd actually have to mail or fax me. (And faxing, that's another thing I said that insulted her.)

Ken, Your Mentor Forgot You
After Alison and I picked up some lillies for my mom for Mother's Day, and they were rather wilty after Lowe's tried to bake them at 350 in their parking lot, we headed over to my parent's house so Dad could try to keep them alive. We sat on the back porch with Mom and Dad and talked for a few hours.

One of the topics that came up was that Alison now works with a lady who's son was trained by my Dad back when he was a flight instructor. When I met the lady, when I visited when Alison first got the job, she had told me how much Ken, her son, really loved my father and that he was a great mentor to Ken. Not just teaching him to fly, but really helping him out in other areas of his life.

Now, though I hate to phrase it like this, in my college days, Ken was also a drinking buddy of mine. And yes, I'd heard him tell me about how great my Dad was.

Well, now Ken is a commercial pilot for a major shipping industry. I let my Dad know this when we were visiting and Dad said, "Who?" So I explained who Ken was. Dad had no recollection of him. Oh, well.

When I Thought My Dad Was A Hero
And I must admit, when I was younger, I thought my Dad was a hero. The most heroic thing that I'd seen him do was to rescue some stupid kid from his own stupidity.

Seems these two kids, I suppose they were around 10 years old, were at Mountain Gap School while the 1975 expansion was underway. There was a grader, one of those huge construction machines that, well, grades the land, left sitting over the weekend by the construction guys. And it seems that the construction fellows forgot to take the keys out. So this dumb kid, and I know I'd do this if I was his age and in his situation, started the thing and got it in gear and couldn't make it stop.

So this grader is going around in circles between the track, the playground, and the school, the kid can't stop it, and if he jumps down the 8 feet to the ground, he has about 0.2 seconds to get out of the way of the five foot tall tires before the 30 ton thing rolls over him.

Kids, if this does happen to you, with the benefit of hindsight, I'd walk down it and jump off the back. But that still leaves the huge grader running amok, and it'd probably smash into the school. So, maybe the best option is to do what this kid did, scream help at the top of his lungs.

Dad runs over. Runs in front of the big killer wheels and jumps up to the cockpit and turns the thing off. He doesn't yell at the kid or anything. Just turns off the machine and I see dad walking back home from it.

This event, and the time that my dad growled "I hate this tree" and pulled a peach tree up from it's roots, made me think my dad was a pretty powerful guy. But, when you think about it, the peach tree was dead and it's roots had rotted.

But kudos on saving the kid, obviously.
- posted by Nick Postagulous @ 8:39 AM