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Thursday, January 06, 2005

shorty long

There was a supervisor at the offshore construction company that I used to work for who's last name was Long. I can't recall his real first name but he picked up the nickname "Shorty" when he was in the Navy. Why? Because he was quite short, maybe 5' 3" or so. It was one of those nicknames where people didn't have to ask him why he was called that. He was likable enough but really quirky and had some odd ideas on how, and why certain things needed to be done. If you worked beneath him you automatically hated his guts even though he was very friendly to everyone. I didn't have to worry about that because I was also a supervisor.

Once when I had been offshore for nearly 3 months I got a weekend break and got to go home for 2 days. That meant I would spend almost as much time travelling to home and back as I would get to spend at home, but after that long you will endure most anything to get some good luvin'. Even an 18 hour long boatride in rough seas where everyone is pukin there guts up from seasickness. Upon my return, Shorty, in his dumbass way, actually asked me if I had done any hunting. Now almost anyone would know that 3 months at sea would make you one very horny boy and huntin' would be the LAST thing I would do, and besides I wasn't a hunter anyway. I replied yeah, Shorty, I had done some great huntin! I was looking for some double breasted, split-tailed mattress thumpers while I was in and I had a great time. The man actually looked at me shocked like he could not believe that I wouldn't have gone huntin'. What a dope.
Everyone in the area laughed at him and he got pretty embarrased.

The man also had the worst luck of anyone I had ever seen. One day me and a diver friend named Mike were on our bikes and we stopped in at the diving yards to pick up some parts for his diving helmet. Shorty was there and he was admiring Mikes brand new Harley, and wound up asking if he could test ride it. Now I can tell you right off there would be no way in hell I would let that dumbass ride mine, but Mike felt like he couldn't refuse, because Shorty was his boss on the job, and not mine. Anyway the area of the dive yards is heavily populated with some super heavy duty equipment like diesel generators and hydraulic power units that weigh tons. Well Shorty got on Mikes bike and revved it up and took off hard and didn't go 30 ft and he slammed head on into a generator, and actually made the generator move! Needless to say he did lots of damage to the bike that he had to pay. He was lucky he didn't kill himself to say the least.

Shorty was into fishing and hunting and had a nice bass boat and trailer. He got off one weekend and, yup you guessed it, he went fishing! That is sad all by itself, but he had some serious bad luck that weekend. He had a friend with him and they were cruising out in the boat when the steering cable broke and he wound up running the boat quite a ways up in to the swamps and got stuck. They wound up stranded there overnight waiting for someone to pass by that could pull them out and tow him in. When they got back to the boat launch he backed his car down the ramp and loaded the boat up and locked the keys in the car with the engine running right there on the ramp.

There were many people waiting to use the ramp and he ended up breaking a window out of the car to get in. Of course he broke the drivers window so he had to sit in broken glass on the way home. Now you would think that would be enough for most people but not for Shorty! Hell no, he backed the boat into his driveway and accidentally rammed the outboard motor clean thru his garage door! Many times when I feel like things aren't going my way, all I have to do is tell myself, at least I ain't Shorty!