James Artimus Owen
A confession (since even if the decongestants are driving, the material has to come from SOMEWHERE):
Getting on the plane in Phoenix, I had a middle seat. And I was hot and sweaty having walked through the terminal, in a sweater, carrying a bag, with the last vestiges of a flu. So when I asked the old dude in the aisle seat to get up so I could take my seat, he was 1) annoyed he had to get up; 2) annoyed I was all sweaty; and 3) annoyed he’d have to sit with me through the flight.
The guy in the window seat was all about his iPhone, and not concerned with us at all. But the old dude was grouchy, and vocal. And he also sniffed at me like I must smell (I had showered before the trip, and had fresh clothes), and did it more than once. Any real or imagined intrusion into his ‘space’ brought sniffing, cringing, and muttering. Nay, MURMURING. Dear reader, he murmured.
The third time he did it, instead of just politely smiling and squeezing myself into a smaller volume of space, the Sudafed took over and tapped directly into the parts of my brain that store The Book of Mormon (actual, not the wicked awesome play), several seasons of Highlander, and the Templar Knight from the third Indiana Jones movie. And they spake with one voice, and it was mine.
(I also Sherlocked him in three different ways.)
“What offends thee, brother?” I asked. “The honest sweat of my brow?”
He sniffed at me. “You shouldn’t come on a plane like that,” he said. “I don’t really want to sit by you.”
I looked around. “It is a full flight, and no other seats are available,” I said. “But perhaps we were meant to sit together, Brother Curtis.”
(Sherlock #1: his boarding pass, with his name visible, was in the seat pocket.)
His eyes got REALLY wide. “The sweat you see,” I went on, “I came by honestly, in the course of my work, which is to ease the stress of mankind in a world rife with perfidy and rampant with iniquity.”
Now several people around us had COMPLETELY stopped whatever they were doing and were listening while trying to pretend they weren’t.
“Do I know you?” He stammered. “Do you know me?”
“I know all those whom the Lord has placed in my path, Brother Curtis,” I said. “This has always been so, since the beginnings of my labors, in times before the written word, when, I earned my sweat amongst the hanging gardens of Babylon.”
Now I’m just looking like a crazy guy. Time for Sherlock #2.
“Tell me - have you been about the Lord’s business, or your own, this last week, in Atlanta?” (He was using a receipt from a news vendor at the Atlanta airport, dated a week ago, as a bookmark in the Mary Higgins Clark book he was reading.)
Guy’s jaw drops open. He can’t decide what to say. “I was visiting my family,” he finally said. “We blessed my new granddaughter.”
I nod in approval. “Very good, Brother Curtis. It was not an accident that we sat together here, today.”
He swallowed really hard. “Who are you?”
“You would not know my name,” I said. “It has not been spoken aloud by any but my brothers since the days we learned how to build bows of wood and bronze at our father’s side. From such work is character built - as you would know.”
“What do you mean?”
“You have spent a lifetime building things as an engineer, Brother Curtis,” I said. “Is it not now time for you to turn your talents to engineering the souls of men?”
(Sherlock #3: the people listening most closely were similarly aged guys, sitting around us, three of whom had windbreakers with an engineering company’s logo on it. I took a shot that he was with them.)
“You’re right,” he said. “I apologize. I was rude.”
I nodded, then did a handwavium thing I’m pretty sure I saw Djimon Hounsou do in Constantine, and he nodded, swallowed hard, and whispered “Amen.” He spent the rest of his flight staring at the back of the seat in front of him while his friends whispered with each other. When we landed, he was pretty much ready to climb over seats to get off the plane.
People should just be NICER. I mean, you never know who’s had the flu and really can’t help being sweaty.
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