Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI

When I arrived home after my sticky day; my daughter, Kaitlyn, ran to meet me. As all you Dad’s know, this is the 2nd best time of the day (the 1st being your “welcome home” smooch from your wife). Kaitlyn ran and jumped into my arms yelling “Daaaddddyyy!!!” along the way. We hugged and the day’s trouble melted away– or so I thought.

About an hour later, I noticed Kaitlyn itching her arms a little. Nothing to worry about, just itching some. A few more minutes later she complained to Heather about it. From the kitchen I hear Heather say, “Oh my! Go show Daddy.” In comes Kaitlyn.

Up and down the inside of her arms, under her chin, across her right cheek and the inside of her legs (she was wearing shorts) were beet red. Inflamed and itchy. I was baffled. It’s like it had come out of nowhere. Then I noticed on my shirt there were these tiny burn holes. It looked like small cigarette burns but with no charring. There were several of them on my shirt. I had noticed these holes earlier, but they were much smaller. Then I noticed that I too was itching but only where the holes in my shirt were located.

Great. Just great. That place has followed me home.

The next morning I woke up and checked on Kaitlyn. She was fine now, but I wasn’t. I started coughing. I won’t go into the nasty details (too much), but let’s just say that things were exiting my body that I had never seen before. Not even on Star Trek. It was actually pretty scary. I just kept hacking up stuff from my lungs for a good 20 minutes. Then I felt fine, so I headed off to work.

I arrived at the factory and headed straight for the second floor in search of Bud. I found him in the control room. He was holding a cup of coffee and carefully perching his hard hat on his head as I walked through the door. He picked up a clipboard and handed it to me. “Come with me, Ben.”

We left the control room and he said, “Fill this order and bring it to Reactor 1. If you need help ask JT.” He pointed to JT and left me.

JT appeared to be your typical Sanfordite. He walked a little bow-legged, not because he worked in a rodeo but because he wanted to look like he worked in a rodeo. He sported a giant silver belt buckle on his otherwise standard uniform. The buckle was nearly completely obstructed by his large beer belly hanging over his belt. Sprouting from the back of his hard hat was the most impressive mullet specimen I have ever laid eyes on. You could tell he was proud of it because every few seconds he would grab it up and throw it behind his back and look around to see if anyone was impressed. His left-rear pants pocket had the required faded ring where a can of SKOAL was waiting within easy reach.

I walked over to JT and said,

“Bud wants me to fill this order. What do I do?”

” ‘Spose you should fill the #$^&! order.”

Pointing to the clipboard, I asked, “Is this the order?”

“What else would it be?”

“Am I supposed to get all these chemicals together?”

“It’s an order, ain’t it?”

“Where are the chemicals?”

“Downstairs, man! DOWNSTAIRS!”

With that, JT waved wildly at the stairs and went back to what he was doing. I went and found Bud in the breakroom and asked him what to do. “Oh, didn’t I tell you? Fill the order. If you need any help, JT is up there.”

I decided to leave my new friend JT to what he was doing and work this out myself. I got some gloves, my mask and a scale and started looking through the countless barrels for the chemicals I needed. Every barrel had a scary sticker on it telling me not to touch it or my skin would melt. I kept thinking to myself that if the world of comic books and superheroes was real, this would be my best chance to get my toxic-waste-accident super powers. Maybe I could become “Glue Man” or something… oh well.

I spent the next hour pouring chemicals into containers, weighing them according to the order and loading them on a pallet. Now, please understand that I had NO IDEA WHAT I WAS DOING. I didn’t leave out some training that I thought would be too boring to include here. This really was all the training I got.

I brought the order up to Reactor 1 and called across the floor to JT, “This good?”

He walked over and looked at everything quickly and said, “Yep. Now start the reaction.”

I looked on the other side of the order and found something that looked like a recipe only instead of “pour 2 cups of flour” it said “pour 100 liters of dextromethylacitatiphydecone-13 into the reactor. DO NOT POUR TOO FAST OR THE FUMES WILL KILL YOU AND THE TOWN OF SANFORD WILL HAVE TO BE EVACUATED …and you will be fired.”

I finished the instructions, closed the hatch and twisted the instructed valves and knobs. The reactor sprung to life beneath my feet. Cool.

Seconds later an alarm sounded from the control room and JT came running out (seeing a man run with a fake bow-leg is a site to behold) yelling something incoherent. It sounded like, “the eminator’s going to release! Decrease your range reduction!”

I looked up to the sky and prayed. “God, just take me home. Really. I know I’ve said that before and didn’t really mean it. But, seriously, take me home.”

JT was suddenly there twisting knobs and steam was blowing out of pipes from all over. The noise was insane.

“There,” he said. “You just needed to adjust the DG-4 ratio to 12%.”

I slapped my forehead in the classic Homer Simpson maneuver saying, “Dang! How did I miss that! I KNEW better!”

“That’s alright, man! Everybody misses the easy stuff now and then.”

Several hours later I looked down to the main floor below and some new guy was dispensing glue from Reactor 1 to a truck outside. I have to admit, I haven’t been that proud of myself in years. I made glue. Beautiful, nasty glue that put holes in my shirt and gave Kaitlyn a rash.

It was time to clock out so I started walking out and ran into Bud.

“Nice batch today.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, what do you think of JT?”

“What do you mean?”

“I think she likes you. You married?”

“SHE?”

“Yeah, I think she likes you. She said so.”

Time stopped. My mind went into a tailspin. JT was a she.

“God, this really isn’t funny anymore.”

Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI

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