Boudicca's Voice

Chicken Little

I’ve spoken before of the Alpha Male with whom I work. It is more than that, however. The man has NO sense of humor. Never in my life have I ever met anyone as intense as he is, and trust me, that is saying a lot. Keep in mind, I’m in aerospace engineering. I work with and have worked with some pretty intense individuals. I’ve even been accused of being too tightly wound and too intense myself.

But this guy, it is so way beyond that, it truly boggles the mind.

I’ve tried to joke with him. Nothing. I’ve teased him like I tease the other guys I work with. Nothing. I’ve watched him interact with other people who have been laughing. Nothing. Stoic-man. Completely stoic.

It doesn’t stop me from ribbing him. As a matter of fact, I think I am probably more determined to occasionally get a jab in here or there. For instance, we’re about to send him to a foreign country to train their military on something pretty important. A country that is in an area that gets the Avian Flu.

The guy is retired military, USAF to be exact. He was a mechanic and knowing his personality, having watched him work, I’m sure he was damn good at what he did. Thorough and anal retentive don’t even begin to describe him, so I’m sure any USAF pilot felt safe when he strapped into the cockpit of this maintainer's aircraft.

However, given his personality traits, imagine my surprise when I found out… he doesn’t have his shot records. Not only does he have to get the normal inoculations to travel to this country (tetanus, typhoid, etc.), but he also has to be reimmunized against all his childhood diseases like MMR. And… since he doesn’t have proof that he had the chicken pox, he has to be immunized against that too.

He is going either to the Public Health Department or the VA for his immunizations, I cannot remember which, but whichever the case, this place does not cover MMR or Chickenpox. He’s had to call around.

For some reason, perverse as it is, I’ve been finding some humor in all of this, we all have been, as we’ve been listening to him bellow from person to person on the phone, trying to arrange all these vaccinations, trying to find someone to give him his childhood immunizations.

Finally I walked up to him when he was off the phone, gently put my hand upon his shoulder and whispered just loud enough for the guy next to him to hear, “You know, I think I could call my kids’ pediatrician and he would have what you need…”

The guy next to him laughed, I laughed to myself as I walked away… but Alpha Male? Nothing. Not even a smile.

Alpha Male is so tightly wound and has so much energy, I think when he sits in his chair, his cube reverberates. He’s in his mid-50s by now… there is no mellowing taking place. At all.

So today, I walk in and they tell me that a phone call was received from Alpha Male and he said something like, “I couldn’t take it anymore. We’re going to get hit by a Cat 5, so I evacuated. I’m on my way to Kentucky.”

Ok, let’s look at this from a couple different angles of rationality. First, we’re all prepared down here in Palm Beach County, but none of us are panicking. At best we’re going to get nailed with a Cat 2 and most of suspect it will be a 1 or TS force winds. The folks who I’m worried about live on THE OTHER COAST. This hurricane has to make it across the state, which granted, is not so big, and then slam into us.

Yeah, a Cat 1 is intense, but as we saw with Miami when Katrina was a Cat 1, the people who died there cleansed the gene pool of stupidity. You don’t run a frickin’ generator in your home and you don’t drive around in hurricane strength winds. A Cat 1 is survivable if you just follow instruction.

We don’t panic over Cat 1s and 2s. We stay prepared and aware for them. Period.

Then second, and last… WHY KENTUCKY? Holy crap. If I were going to evac, I’d go to Jacksonville (5 hours), or Atlanta (9 hours) or… Pensacola (9 hours). But, Kentucky? That’s gotta be like 13 to 15 hours. Why in the hell Kentucky?

The whole thing is so irrational. I’m having a tough time wrapping my mind around it. Really.

I heard this story and finally I said to the guys in my cube, “Follow me on the logic path here, guys, we’re intrusting this guy to go to a foreign country, train their military on A, B, and C, but he’s such a whack he freaks and evacs for something that might not even happen? Am I the only one seeing a problem here? God help us if they really get the Avian Flu in that country. He’ll have a frickin’ breakdown.”

I end up going over to one of the secretary’s desks. I’m not really ‘in’ with the secretaries. And I don’t mean that in a snotty way or in a ‘I feel so left out’ way. They laugh with me all the time, but some of these women go way back to Company X, whereas I go way back with most of the men. So the women have certain things they would just ‘never’ joke with me about. Like sex. They don’t know me well enough and I’m 10-20 years younger than they.

So I’m in her cube and we’re laughing about all this and she tells me that Alpha Male has had the same girlfriend for over 10 years. I’m stunned. Finally I said, “What in the hell keeps her around? It’s GOT to be the sex.”

She looked at me like she wasn’t sure what to say. Finally she laughed and confessed that she and the other women had been having the same conversation and then she added, “Can you imagine? He’d be yelling, ‘DID YOU CLIMAX YET?!!!’

I’m laughing hysterically now and I replied, “Holy crap. Talk about performance anxiety. I’d be yelling back, “YES! YES! YES!” at which point she raises her hands and says, “I’d scream, “Hallelujah, Praise the LORD!”

I was almost crying. Poor guy. We’re sitting there imagining what his sex life is like and he’s evac’ing to Kentucky.

I’ve taken to calling him “Chicken Little”. Hey, he could be right. We could get slammed with a Cat 5. The last laugh could be on us. But I still think Kentucky is a wee bit too far to run. Just sayin’…

Posted by Boudicca at October 22, 2005 12:01 AM | TrackBack