For Screechy

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Once when I was a child, my father –an expert mechanic- took me into the garage.

“Son,” says Dad. “Do you want to grow up to be a great mechanic like myself?”

“Sure I do, Dad!” I says.

He scruffs my hair, grinning. “That’s my boy.”

I reach for a hammer on the shelf –it seemed gigantic compared to my smallish hands- but Dad stopped me.

“No son,” he corrects. “As a mechanic, you gotta understand the nature of things.” He walks me outside to the now harsh-seeming daylight. Scooping up a handful of dirt, he sifts it through his fingers and says “You want to work on an internal combustion engine? Well this is where it all begins. You see we get our blah oil from the ground, and blah blah energy into blah petroleum and blah blah blah blah fires the pistons blah blah blah … ”


*** Despite not knowing shit about being a mechanic, at sixteen I was tenured at Harvard and consequently became the Chief Engineer for Boeing.

A "prodigy," my very first duty as Chief Engineer for Boeing was to determine why so many workers were getting limbs and digits torn off on the factory floor.

I quickly submitted a report stating that the equipment would work more efficiently, faster, and most importantly safer if the workers stopped tearing their limbs and digits off with it.

I was promoted to National Safety Board Chairman, and fired later that same day for driving my forklift to a McDonald's Drive-Thru for fries.