Iron Fist

On my trip to our Salt Lake City office I arrived to find that they are even more disorganized on the Utah end of the operation than they are at home, and all the company cars were missing and no one seemed to know where they were.  When it came time to call it a day and none of the cars had happened to wander back from where they had gotten themselves lost, there was a bit of a scramble and eventually it was decided that I could take one of the big work trucks for the night.  I sighed in resignation, tossed my overnight bag and laptop across the bench to the passenger side, and climbed up into the cab of the giant GMC truck for the drive into town to my hotel.

After a few hours cooped up in my room I decided that what I really wanted to spend my dinner allowance on was a pizza.  A big, greasy pepperoni and sausage pizza.  Yelp! turned up a few promising places; I picked one that sounded about right for what I had in mind, memorized the directions, and wandered down to the parking lot with the truck keys in hand.

There had been few cars when I checked in, but now the first level of the parking garage was nearly full.  Things were a bit cramped, and the truck was a bit longer of a vehicle than I was used to, but I judged that I shouldn’t have too much trouble backing up and driving off in one straight shot.  I climbed back up into the truck and started the engine, slowly backing up and watching the car parked to my left as I turned the steering wheel.  Satisfied that I wasn’t going to scrape up my neighbor on the way out, I turned to look over my shoulder, only to discover that for some reason a man was standing directly in my way.  And when I say directly, I mean it — if I there had been crosshairs mounted on the rear gate of the truck he would have been dead center in them.  Surprised, I stopped the truck, probably less than two feet from where he was standing.

And the man just stood there, looking down.  I could only see the top half of him, and couldn’t make out quite what he was doing.  Was he drunk and had stopped right there to take a pee?  Held frozen in fear by the sight of a mouse?  Being mugged by a dwarf?  No, it wasn’t any of these things, and after a moment I recognized enough of the tell-tale signs to realize that this was a person Playing With His Mobile Device.  I gave him a minute to notice that hey, there’s a big truck immediately to your left, but when he showed no sign of moving along I brought my hand up to hit the car horn…

…and I wondered.

I wondered what it would take to get him to notice that there was a truck right next to him.  Apparently the nearby rumble of the engine in an enclosed parking garage wouldn’t do it.  The bright red glare of the brake lights wasn’t triggering a response, either.  For as close as I was, the exhaust had to practically be blowing on his legs.  Curious as to what it would take to trigger his proximity sense of HOLY SHIT THERE IS A 2-TON TRUCK RIGHT NEXT TO ME, I began tapping on the brake, letting the truck inch slowly back towards him.  So now, in addition to truck noise, diesel exhaust, and giant mass of slowly encroaching steel, he had the added warning factor of bright flashing red lights as I tapped repeatedly on the brakes.  Closer.  Closer.

How oblivious do you have to be to fail to notice a long bed truck slowly filling up the entirety of your peripheral vision?  How had natural selection let this man down that he was unable to detect an enormous truck inching closer and closer to hitting his legs?  How would someone like this fare against a natural threat more dangerous than a tree stump?  I began to imagine him as a caveman on a savanna in mankind’s distant past.

“Moog.  We need to talk.”

“Hey, Buldar!  I found some sticks!  You know, for the fire.”

“Ah…I see that.  Listen, Moog — you’re a nice caveman and all, but I just don’t think you’re going to cut it here.  You can’t hunt.  You can’t gather.  You don’t seem to be able to make fire on your own.  You even got lost inside the cave once.”

“Hey look, if this is because of what happened on the last hunt–”

“Yes, Moog.  This is because of that last hunt, where we were hunting the mighty cave deer, and you were so engrossed watching some beetles that you didn’t notice that stag nearby and it knocked you over into a ditch.”

“That deer totally snuck up on me, Buldar!”

“How, Moog? You were in the middle of a prairie. It just sauntered right up to until it got close enough to hit you with its antlers.”

“But…but…”

“Look…you’re gonna have to go.  Maybe there will be a time after so many winters have come and gone that no man now alive can count them, and the tribe will have grown so large that they can support someone who looks at shiny pieces of obsidian all day but can’t make a decent spear-head or trap a hare, but the glaciers are coming closer and we need everyone devoted to making sure we survive the long cold ahead, and as such there is no place for you in Buldar’s Tribe.  Sorry.”

“Fine!  Whatever, Buldar!  I’ll leave, but I’m totally taking these sticks with me!”

“That’s actually part of an antelope thigh bone and a piece of dried mastodon turd, but you’re welcome to them.  Good day to you, Moog.”

I had to be less than a foot away from him now, and still: nothing.  Concerned that I might actually knock him over, I stopped.  And waited.  And when it seemed that I was going to have to hit the horn and scare the bejeezus out of him, Moog came to the last of his emails and looked up, and then to his left, and made the face that meant WHERE THE FUCK DID THIS TRUCK COME FROM?  Properly embarrassed, he ran around to the passenger window, waving his Blackberry in weak apology.  ”Ha ha, you know how these things are!” he said.  I rolled my eyes and nodded, and continued backing up now that he had vacated the last two feet of empty space I needed to finish backing up.  In an effort to make amends he ran back towards the rear of the truck, windmilling his arms in the direction I was already moving, calling out “YOU’VE GOT PLENTY OF ROOM!  YOU CAN BACK UP MORE YOU HAVE ROOM!”

I shifted gears and gave an absent-minded wave through the rear windshield as I drove away, not sparing another glance for that lousiest of cavemen, hoping that another tribe would take him and his Blackberry in before he froze to death in the coming winter.

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