David E Anderson – Author

I knew something would go wrong, but didn’t expect it to happen so quickly.  For me, things going wrong is as inevitable as Elvis breaking into song in one of his movies.  You may not know exactly when it’s going to happen, but you know it will before too long.  So when my arm got stuck in Mr. Kemper’s mail slot, I decided to take it as a positive sign.

Think of it this way – maybe having everything go to crap at the very beginning meant nothing else would go wrong, that it was now officially out of the way.  There was just enough optimism left in my soul to keep me moving on.

But on the downside, my arm was stuck in the freakin’ mail slot.

Considering my bad luck, it probably wasn’t a good idea to break into my boss’ house, but I never let a stupid idea stop me from seeing it through.  If I did, I’d never get anything done.

I’d played it smart for years, did what a man was supposed to do.  Played nice.  And it ruined my life.  The “powers that be” had kicked my ass, so now I was kicking back.  Everything I cared about had been taken from me, so now it was my turn to take.

I knew this could turn out badly.  But to be honest, I didn’t really care.

I’d first tried putting my right arm through the slot up to the elbow, but I couldn’t quite reach the lock, so I put it in clear to the shoulder.  A weird angle, but I managed to reach up and unlock the door.

But then I couldn’t get my damn arm out.

I know what you’re thinking.  Those mail slots are too small for a fully grown man to slip an arm through.  But I’m not certain I qualify as “fully grown”.  I’m guessing I’m as big as I’m going to get, but I’ve never weighed more than 99 pounds in my life.  Trust me; my arms are skinny enough to fit through a mail slot.

It helps not to work out, I guess.

Finally, I positioned myself just right so I could push against the door with my feet, and managed to yank my arm out of the slot.  A bit sore, but I could live with it.  I rolled my turtleneck’s sleeve down to cover the bruises on my upper arm.  I noticed that my glove had come off, and was careful not to use that hand to touch anything.

I called out upon entering, in case someone was home.  “Helloooo…”  But the house was pitch-black.  Samuel and Alice Kemper were on vacation at Mackinac Island until Wednesday.  Four days away.

I took my time entering the house, preparing to run if someone called out or an alarm went off.  But all remained quiet.

I found the glove and slipped it back on, then adjusted my glasses.  I glanced back at my pickup to make sure everything was in order.  I could see the waves of heat wafting from the canvas covering the bed of my green pickup truck.

My wife, Sarah, laughed at me when I bought the truck.  Compensating, much?  In order to reach the pedals, I had to pull the seat all the way forward and still put a couch cushion behind me.  But something in my life had to be macho, so I got some badass wheels.

I shut the front door most of the way, leaving enough of a gap that I could slide my foot in to pry it open, since my hands would be full.

I flipped up a light switch.  Nothing happened.

I looked outside and saw the streetlights were on, so I didn’t think there was a power outage in the area.  Did Kemper shut off the electricity while he was on vacation?  Who the hell does that?  Isn’t there food in the refrigerator?

Either way, no power was fine with me.  I wore a ski-mask in case Kemper had security cameras hidden around the house, but no power meant no functioning cameras.  Besides, I’m not sure what help the mask would have been.  Sure, it hides my face, but it certainly doesn’t do much for my height.  Who else would my boss know who’s barely five feet tall?

I pulled up the sleeve of my turtleneck and glanced at my watch.  It was exactly seven o’clock.  I had a lot to do.

Now that I knew the house was empty, I began.

I went back to my truck and snatched a garbage bag from the box.

I began with the living room, grabbing all of the little things I could find.  There were vases, small pictures on the walls, ashtrays, expensive books and a whole bunch of goofy shit – I really had no idea what they were, but they seemed to be made of either silver or gold.

After about five minutes, the garbage bag was full.  I carried it through the open front door.  I lifted the canvas, jumped up, pulled the heavy-as-hell bag up into the back and pushed it all the way to the front of the truck.

Holy shit; this was going to be more work than I expected.  I probably shouldn’t fill ‘em quite so heavy.  Less weight would mean more bags and thus more trips, but I had all night and plenty of bags.

I grabbed another bag, then went back to the living room and grabbed a couple of table lamps, and took them out to the truck.

Things got better when I stopped thinking about doing the job, and started thinking about something more important.  Me.  I love thinking about me.

My name is Wilbur Longdinger.  Yes, I know.  Don’t say it.  I can’t even say my own name without laughing my ass off.  As if the Longdinger part wasn’t bad enough, my parents decided to bestow upon me the glorious and enchanting title of Wilbur.  No one in their right mind can even say the name without thinking of the damn pig in Charlotte’s Web.  Or worse, that asshole on “Mr. Ed”.  Wi-i-i-illl-burrrr!

It’s like handing me the crown of the great land of Geekalot and I didn’t even deserve the damn thing.  But if anyone looked the part, it sure as hell would be me.  I wear thick glasses, have black curly hair, and to top it all off, I’m shorter than Shirley Temple standing at the heels of Raymond Burr.

I should point out – there’s a difference between a nerd, a geek and a dork, even though the terms are often used interchangeably.  A nerd is someone of above-average intelligence, yet is socially inept.  A geek is someone with unusual obsessions of the type frowned upon by society in general.  A dork is someone who is unattractive, oftentimes clumsy, and noted for a lack of adequate judgment.

I’m all three.  A nerd, a geek, and a dork.

Welcome to my life.

Yes, I was bullied in school.  Many children were, but not as bad as I was.  I may not have been the only kid to have his underwear run up the flagpole, but I was sure as hell the only one to be wearing them at the time.

I guess I decided to play the part when I discovered the best way to deal with all the bullying, teasing and crap in school was to laugh it off.  Act like they were laughing with me, though I knew damn well they were laughing at me.  I guess because I seemed to be in on the joke, the students assumed I accepted it.  Anyway, being the class clown provided me with something to do while I breezed through classes.

That’s the other doozy my parents so graciously gifted upon me to confirm my seal of disapproval.  I’m a genius.

School was a snap.  I graduated high school a year early, at the top of my class.  Then I went into Engineering at the University of Southern Michigan and completed the four-year program in three years.  So, I went into the field most relevant to my major.

Yup, you got it.

Insurance.

Well, it was either that or thievery.  Not that there’s much of a difference.  And sometimes one leads to the other.

When I’d first started at Miller Insurance, I made a ton of money.  Which I promptly spent on shit I didn’t really need.  My wife, Sarah, griped about it.  Justifiably so.  Mainly because we decided to put the bills in her name.  When we started getting phone calls from creditors, she convinced me to start spending more wisely.

Then the economy hit the downturn.  When people don’t have much money, they don’t buy much insurance.  I started bringing home about half of what I’d been making when I first started.  It wasn’t enough, especially since this was just after our first child, Harry, was born.

And to make matters worse, I worked purely on commission.  It had been great when I was selling a lot of insurance, but the days I sold nothing at all, I earned nothing at all.

When we had our daughter, Anna, I tried to talk to my boss, Mr. Kemper.  He said Miller couldn’t afford to move me to a salaried position.

I could cover rent, usually, but we rarely had much food in the house.  It didn’t matter whether I could feed us.  But the kids.  I couldn’t hurt the kids.

The entire company was taking a hit, and things were tense, to say the least.  Mr. Kemper was an emotional guy, and not in a good way.  Easily angered.  Tended to yell.  I made sure to keep my head down, same way I did with the bullies in school.

The one time I lost my own temper, it was bad.

I called up some guy to talk about insurance.  I guess I woke him, because he started swearing at me.  Honestly, I understood, and apologized at first, expecting him to hang up.  But he just kept going on and on, eventually saying stuff about my mother which wasn’t appropriate.  Or physically possible, I believe.  Finally, I had enough and called him a few obscene names, then slammed the phone down.

I had no idea Mr. Kemper stood twenty feet away, listening to my end of the conversation.  All he heard was me swearing at a potential customer and hanging up on him.  Not my best work, even if some of my insults were pretty creative.

He called me into his office.

I tried explaining my end, that the person I’d called wasn’t about to buy any insurance and swore at me first, but Kemper wouldn’t listen.  It didn’t matter what the person on the other end did, he explained.  An agent was never rude to a potential customer.

“He wasn’t a potential customer,” I said.  “Trust me.”

“If he’s not a customer, then he’s a potential customer,” he responded in one of those voices like he’s doling out the wisdom of the ages.

I finally realized he wasn’t going to listen to anything I said, unless it was exactly what he wanted to hear.  So I told him I had acted unprofessionally and it would never happen again.

I was given a two-week suspension.

Because of the lost income (and with us already a tad behind on our rent), we lost our apartment.  I moved into a one-bedroom in a bad part of town.  Sarah and the kids moved in with her mom.

I think she’ll take me back if I don’t return to her empty-handed.

I won’t.