by Rob Gunther
And what about Superman? He never makes a mistake? He never gets bored, or lazy? What’s the super-equivalent of throwing a gum wrapper on the ground because nobody’s looking and you just really don’t feel like holding that wrapper anymore, looking for a garbage can, never finding any garbage cans? You don’t think he ever makes a mistake like that? Like, OK, I just saved this rocket from crash landing out of orbit, but I don’t feel like figuring out what I’m supposed to do with all of this debris. Do I have to bring it to the government? Are they going to ask me to just hold on a second while they figure out which branch of the military has to take care of this? Or is it more like, jeez, I’m tired, I just caught this rocket, and I’m really hungry, and I don’t feel like dealing with this anymore. Nobody’s looking, so I’ll just toss it in the ocean.
Come on, somebody make a story like that, give me something to relate to. Everything’s just so unbelievable.
I want to be a space waiter
I want to go on a space adventure. It just sucks that they only pick physicists, scientists, and military people to be astronauts. That’s not fair at all. Why can’t they just pick regular guys to go up in space? There’s got to be something I’m good for up there. Like, what, astronauts don’t need waiters? Hey NASA, don’t you think maybe your scientists might be able to do all of their space experiments a little better if they weren’t too busy rehydrating their own space food?
That could be me. Rob, the space waiter. I’d be your go-to cosmic server. Actually, you’d probably need to send up a kitchen guy also. Because look, I’ll gladly serve you guys whatever you want. “Do you need anything else? A Diet Coke? How is everything going over here?” But cooking? Space cooking? Yeah, you’re definitely going to need to hire a space cook. Trust me, I’m a good enough waiter, but you don’t want to see me behind the line.
That’s restaurant jargon. Like how you guys have space jargon: “roger that,” and “Houston we have a problem,” and “Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Blastoff.” In a restaurant, the line, that’s where the cooks make the food.
One time I was like, “Boss, put me behind the line, I can do it,” and I just kept bugging him, over and over again, month after month until he was like, “All right, if you’re really that interested in pursuing a culinary career, I guess we could have you shadow the salad guy one day a week, and you could learn the basics.” I won’t bore you with the rest of the story, the whole lemon that wound up in the deep fryer, the globs of boiling oil splattering everywhere, just, seriously, me and the space cook. We’d be a team.
As long as you guys aren’t paying me in space tips. Haha. That was a joke. No, I’ll go to space for free. Come on. But wait, while we’re at it, do you think it would be too much to bring up a space busboy? Just one guy. I usually have two busboys, but I’ll manage, I’ll help him out, help pick up his slack. I’m not above bussing my own tables, OK, but I think it would be fair to give me at least one extra pair of hands. And it’ll wind up being another pair of hands for you and the crew if you think about it.
Because if it were just me up there, just one service member taking care of the staff, I mean, if you think about it, we’d be up there for months, who knows how long. Eventually you guys would get to liking me, I’m very personable, and so we’d be joking around, maybe you’d start letting me do some space experiments, nothing big, you know I’d start small, I’d work my way up, you’d be like, wow, are you sure you haven’t had any career astronaut training?
I’d be a natural.
And then, as you guys would all be taking turns complimenting me, talking about what a great job I did on my first spacewalk, you’d interrupt to be like, “Hey, Rob, can I get another Diet Coke?” Because for all of my supplementary achievements in the field, my primary task would still be that of a space waiter.
And I’d say, “Sure thing, one second, here you go sir,” but it would gnaw at me, the resentment, the bitterness festering inside.
Just one space busboy, as a barrier between my mission and my ambition. You guys won’t feel as inclined to break those professional barriers because you won’t have time to. I’ll be constantly on the space busboy’s ass, making sure that you all have fresh linen, that your water glass is always full. Well, what is it, not a glass, right, because of the zero G? Never mind, we’ll figure out the logistics.
I just … it’s not my fault I’m only a waiter. That’s what I did in high school, waited tables, and I did it while I was in college. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to go on a space mission? There shouldn’t be any reason why my career path hinders me from the types of scientific advancements I’d really like to pursue. Surely there has to be a way to apply my talents to outer space. Honestly, if you could rate your last experience in space, from a purely customer service oriented point of view, in what ways were you happy? In what areas do you feel like the service lacked? Were there opportunities for improvement? I’ll constantly be asking you those questions. How is everything? Can I get you anything else? You need me, come on guys, space needs me. I need space. I seriously need to go to outer space. Please.
I got a huge speeding ticket. Thanks a lot, reddit.
I read this meme on reddit one time, it was a picture with text written on top of it, a picture of a cop, and it said, “If you’re speeding and you see a cop hiding on the side of the road, and it’s too late to slow down, try waving at the officer. He’s more likely not to pull you over.”
So sure enough, I’m driving, months later, not thinking about cops at all, not about cops, not even about driving really, which is dangerous, because my mind wanders when it should be alert, my mind wanders and my foot gets tired and the next thing I know, yup, I’m speeding. And wouldn’t you know it, there’s a cop, a New York State Trooper hiding in this little clearing between trees. He’s got his cop sunglasses on, his giant highway cop hat.
I let off the gas because I don’t want to do a ridiculous slamming of the brakes. Let’s see if I can’t make this look natural. But I’m going like twenty, twenty-five miles over the speed limit, and as I pass him, yeah I’m not giving it any more gas, but I’m still flying. I look to my left and this trooper, he’s looking right at me, directly at me, like turning his head as I pass and we make eye contact. He maintains eye contact, and he’s got the radar gun out, and that’s following me too, and I look back to my speedometer, and maybe it’s thirty miles over the speed limit.
So I remember that reddit thing and I act, quickly. I go to wave to him, but I don’t have the time really to think it through, like what kind of a wave am I going to give him? I’m not going to be like, “Hi! Hello!” all overly enthusiastic. But I don’t want it to be, “Yo. Sup,” either. I shoot for the middle and I wind up doing this weird, almost half-salute, two-fingered wave. As I’m doing it I’m thinking, Jesus, what the hell kind of a wave is this?
And the cop must have been thinking the same thing because as soon as I pass, he tears right out of his hiding spot and hits his lights.
Getting pulled over is the worst. Sometimes they’ll ride behind you for a little bit, they’ll make you sweat, following you, tailing you for miles, lulling you almost into a false sense of security, like, don’t worry buddy, I’m not going to hit the lights. I’m just going to follow really closely, very, very closely, right on your ass and, guess what? I actually am going to hit the lights. Pull over.
But like I said, this is an immediate hitting of the lights, and so I just know I’m in for it. I’m in the left lane, so I think, do I have to get over to the right lane, pull over to the right shoulder? I put on my right turn signal and wait to change lanes. The cop gets even closer, and his car makes a loud siren noise. So I figure, OK, left shoulder it is. I flip on the left turn signal, but the cop does the same thing. So I just slow down, like, OK, I’ll stop right here, but he gets on his loudspeaker and starts saying something at me. But you know how those speakers are. I can’t understand a thing, and I’m still going like fifty.
So I just pull
into the left shoulder and stop. The trooper gets out and comes to my window. Every time this happens I always think about how on TV, in the movies, the driver says, line-for-line, “What seems to be the problem, officer?” I always consider saying it, but how many people actually say that to a cop in real life? Does it happen like way too much? Maybe it’s a cop’s pet peeve, pulling somebody over, somebody who knows they were speeding, and they roll down the window and they’re like, “Huh? Problem?”
So I don’t say anything. And he just looks at me for a minute, and then finally he’s like, “You want to play games? Are you fucking high?” and I’m like, shit, thanks a lot, reddit.
I try to tell him, “No, officer, sorry. It’s just that, I read this thing on the Internet about waving to a cop as you pass by. I’m sorry.”
And he just goes, “License and registration.”
So I take out my wallet, I take out my license, I also take out this PBA card, like if you know a cop in real life, they give you this card to show to other cops, maybe they’ll be a little more sympathetic.
He sees me go for the PBA card in my wallet. He reaches into the car, takes it, throws it into the woods, far, like he was one of those trick card throwers that you see on TV, like that card’s gone, and he repeats, “License. And. Registration.”
And he gave me a big ticket. Fucking reddit.
I sent Andre a friend request
I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately about positivity, about being positive and staying positive and doing and thinking positive things. It’s been a journey, a real one, deep within, I’m accessing like, universal things here, about humanity, about positivity, words like oneness and the universe and consciousness. It’s a real spiritual awakening, and so it came to me, not really like an epiphany, because it wasn’t just one thing, but a lot of little epiphanies, one after the other, everything’s constantly changing.
And so I thought about Andre. We kept butting heads, reaching out, pulling back, and ultimately it got to the point where we lost all contact with each other. Our friendship was all but destroyed, almost like it had never existed in the first place. But it had existed, I think, and so, as I continued deeper and deeper on my spiritual cosmic journey of universal self-discovery, I felt like there was something holding me back, preventing me from achieving that real oneness.
It was Andre.
I resolved to make things right between us, to absolve the stain from our shared history, to make true amends. I sent him a friend request on Facebook. I was the one who severed that digital tie months ago. We had this botched fishing trip and when I got home I removed him from my friend list.
But a day passed. And then another day. And Andre didn’t accept.
I sent him a text message, “Yo, u get my friend request?” with no response. I tried clicking on his profile, but only very limited information was available to non-friends. So I asked our shared friends, a group that, to be honest, I’d also kind of lost touch with over the past year. I guess I had just kind of stopped taking most phone calls from those guys. I didn’t want it to be weird, if the both of us showed up, Andre and me, ruining everybody else’s good time.
My friend Tony filled me in, told me Andre joined the Air Force, that he left like six months ago. They had a big party, this huge send off. Was I even invited? I could feel my grip on the positivity starting to slip. “But hey,” Tony told me, “He’s coming back earlier than expected. He got wounded, and so he had to be discharged. We’re all having a giant welcome home party this Thursday. You should come. Nobody’s seen you in forever.”
I felt like a huge dick, like I’d alienated all of my friends, like I’d been spending so much time on my positivity training that I’d totally lost touch with everybody. And yeah, I wasn’t on speaking terms with Andre, but I would have totally come to his send off. Come on, they should have reached out, I would have been there for him.
I showed up on Thursday, and everybody was huddled around this one stool by the bar. I only saw the top of Andre’s head because he was sitting down. All of these crazy thoughts went through my head, like what was the extent of Andre’s injuries? Did he have all of his limbs? Would he still recognize me?
But then he got off the stool, like stood up by himself, and he turned around to order another drink. That’s when we made eye contact. I went up to him, told him, “Hey man, sorry it’s been so long. I sent you a Facebook friend request.”
“Thanks, man,” he said. That was it, which was good because normally he’d say something like, “That’s big of you,” and whatever. We’ve always - or I’ve always - had this who’s-the-bigger-person complex, but it’s all silly, doesn’t matter. This guy’s a vet now, he’s totally the bigger person.
And so I threw in a, “Thanks for your service, Andre.”
He kind of shrugged. “You know, just trying to do my part.” And then he just sort of looked down at his shoes.
“So what happened?” I asked. “Why’d you get sent home?”
He looked up and said, “My injury.”
I was like, “Yeah, is it bad? Did you get wounded in a conflict?”
He shook his head. “No, I was just getting all of this back pain during training, so before we got shipped out, they sent me home.”
Just then our friend Hank shouted out to the whole bar, “Hey, let’s welcome back our good friend Andre, a real American hero!” and everybody started cheering. Andre did a casual salute to the bar and they all went nuts.
“So,” I said, trying to bring him back to our conversation, “you never even really went?”
“No, I went, I just, you know … I’m injured.”
“Three cheers for Andre!”
“Hip-hip, hooray!”
I felt myself drifting even further from my spiritual center, and I was about to say something. I had that look on my face, like, are you serious? And you’re going to stand here and take this hero’s welcome? I didn’t say it, but I didn’t have to, because, like I said, I was making that kind of weird skeptical face.
“Well, what about the friend request? Are you going to accept it?”
He said, “OK, sure,” and he took out his phone right there and accepted it, but when he exited the Facebook app, right before he put his phone away, I looked toward his text message notifications.
I wanted to check his message history, to see if he ignored that text message I sent him, so I said, “Do you mind if I borrow your phone for a second?”
He just said, “What? Uh, hold on, I have to go to the bathroom,” and when he came back he didn’t mention the phone thing. I didn’t want to bring it up again.
The rest of the night went by without incident. When I got home, I went onto Facebook, and Andre was back on my news feed. He wrote, “Glad to be home! Thanks everybody for coming out! War is hell!” and like three of our friends responded, stuff like, “USA! USA! USA!”
Appendix: The Trilogy
The Trilogy: Part one of three
Things are about to get a lot more awesome around here. I’m talking about the trilogy.
This trilogy.
This is part one. I’ve always wanted to do a trilogy. Some of my favorite things in life are split up into three. You obviously can’t write a trilogy without at least acknowledging the most influential trilogy of all time: the Blade trilogy. Haha, I’m just kidding. Everyone knows I’m really talking about Star Wars.
How great is Star Wars? Great enough that I shouldn’t even really be talking about it. Everybody has already said basically everything there is to say about Star Wars. Personally, I think it would have been a little bit more interesting if Uncle Owen refused to buy R2-D2 and instead stuck by his original purchase of the inferior R5-D4. You remember, “that red one over there?” Maybe then we wouldn’t have had to hear C-3PO complaining about R2 so much. That got old pretty fast, didn’t it?
Trilogies are great because each part is perfectly compartmentalized into just the right proportions of a perfect story.
In the first part of a trilogy, everything is new. You don’t have any established rules to abide by, because everything’s unfolding for the first time. Remember how cool it was to see Batman train to become Batman in that first Batman movie? (I’m talking about the good Batman movies, with Christian Bale, not that lame franchise from the eighties and nineties.) And then he got his whole Batman outfit? And the first time he appears out of nowhere and everyone’s just like, “Who the hell are you?” and he’s like, “Call me the Batman.”
Epic. Just absolutely epic.
I love trilogizing. I try to break up everything I do into three parts. If I’m at work and I’m waiting on a table, I really like to make only three appearances. Part one: “Hey how’s everybody doing today, ready to order?” They better be ready to order because I’m not coming back until Part two: the serving. That’s when I serve the food. I then disappear as the customers come to grips with what they’ve ordered, realizing I’m not coming back to check up on them, so they’d better just make the best out of their meals. And then, finally, Part three: the check. Pay up, mothafuckas.
Life is nothing more than one huge trilogy. You’re a kid, you’re an adult, and then you’re an old person. I’d have to say that the first part of this trilogy is definitely the best. That’s why I’ve been reluctant to embrace the part two of my life. Every time I feel like I’m acting too old or I’ve lost a little of my whimsy or whatever, I like to throw a huge temper tantrum, breaking stuff, acting like a huge baby: crying, screaming, everything. And then when I settle down, I’ll look at myself in the mirror and say to myself, well Rob, you’ve sure got a lot of growing up to do. And I’ll feel better, like I’m still wrapping up the part one of my life. And it’s true. It’s all about expectations here. I plan on living to be a hundred and twenty years old. So based on simple arithmetic, I still have over a decade left of acting like a self-centered, entitled brat. I’ll grow up eventually. Unless I get hit by a bus while I’m doing something completely irresponsible, like running across the street with a huge lollipop in my mouth.