By the Twitching on My Thumb, Something Weird this Way Comes
By S. Craig Taylor, Jr.
February 28, 2004
NOTE: Since I have the pictures for evidence, I felt that I would share this inside corporate story with you.
Ahh! Spring is finally on the way and that is when a young man’s fancy turns to love; or, more likely, to baseball, but, certainly, not to anything that involves heavy lifting. So, you ask, where does a young woman’s fancy turn as the snow melts? The philosophers, most of whom have been male, have been cautiously silent on this topic and probably never had a clue. Well, in the case of our very own Becky Mauder, her fancy turns to competing in a “Strong Man” competition. Becky, although an attractive young woman of average height, is not nicknamed “The Enforcer” for nothing and I would hate to be the big, burly man who made the disastrous mistake of attempting to prevent this little woman from competing in anything that seized her fancy. Even with my inside knowledge, her announcement that she was entering, punctuated by squeezing a brick to powder, was a surprise.
The rules for a “Strong Man” competition remain pretty much a mystery to the rest of us confused and fearful working stiffs here at Lost Battalion Games but, apparently, they call for Becky to spend time at the Gym when she should be here with the rest of the gang going blind looking at a computer console and working on a future case of carpal tunnel syndrome. Her awesome strength, of course, comes in handy when Becky has to lift the huge piles of books that the company has ‘borrowed’ from me (please review Publisher’s Corner Book Em Danno) and probably is, on balance, mostly to the good. Of course, her trainer made her promise to use her great powers only to fight evil but I suspect that she had her fingers crossed when that promise was made.
What I finally realized about “Strong Man” competitions is that they somehow involve a giant tire. Fancy that! About the time that Becky tired of tossing Jeff and me around the yard (for both accuracy and distance) and juggling her two children (for height and bounce); an absolutely humongous tire mysteriously appeared on the lawn of our corporate offices. I examined this awesome artifact with fear and trepidation and, although of the right size and shape, it did not appear to be an UFO. Since no one here ever tells me anything, everyone claimed that they did not know where it came from or why it was here. In this case, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that everyone was afraid to ask. I know that I was.
Anyhow, to make a long story short, one sunny afternoon, the somber and oppressive silence that we like to maintain in our underground computer room (‘da bunker’) was broken by the sound of mighty grunts and earthquake-like thuds coming from outside. The accompanying pictures of Becky tossing the tire as she practices for the “Strong Man” competition finally solved the mystery of why it was there. Now, I can move on to being confused about something else.
