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The Life Expectancy of a Sock
Back in those days we weren't ones for mushing about with feelings and so forth, not much for sittin' down and talkin' it over, not much for cute little surprise twists at the end of it all; we just sort of got on with it, got down to it, and, d'you know what? If we were asked to take a bullet for another sock, well, damnit, we took it.
Sure, you weren't excited about it or anything, taking a bullet sucks whether you're a sock or a rutabaga or a parachute so far as I can tell. There's no way around it, like.
Man, I tell you, I'd come home grubby and sweaty and not a little bit tired, but there you'd have it. You'd, or I would, anyway, I don't know what you or your kind did back then, but man, I would come home, slump on the floor for a bit, then I would slog myself off to bed and get ready to go do it again the next day.
Some of the boys I knew worked in the coal mines, and those guys used to tell tall tales about takin' bullets for their buddies, and you know what, they were full of it. Who the hell brings a gun into a coal mine, anyway, and if someone's just sitting there throwing bullets at you with their hand what the hell's the point of that? That's just stupid. But, then, you don't want to be too critical of those guys, after all, they'd sucked in more coal dust than was good for a sock and that sort of stuff makes you go a bit funny after a while. My pop was a coal worker, before he got handpicked, as he tells the story, and he was pretty happy to be out of those mines, even if it meant giving up his family and lifetime supply of coal, which, lemme tell you, is pretty damn useful during the winter and you notice it when it's gone just before your senses go numb in negative fifteen degrees some nights.
I followed, see. Like father, like son, I got into the dark and shady world of sock espionage.
When I meet some people and I tell them what I do, I inevitably get some joker sayin', "Oh yeah? Takin' bullets, were you? Well you weren't a very good spy, then, if you were takin' bullets all the time." Well, true. "But, Bub," I usually say, "you try taking just one, just one bullet through your grey and tinglies and you see how much you talk about it, if, that is, you do get to talk after it's been through your stitching lengthwise." That usually shuts 'em up, but I tell you, as well, it's not all like it is in movies. Or like how you'd expect it to be after reading the dictionary definition of 'spy.' That's the defintion that mentions doing it secretly or 'from a point of concealment'.
Sometimes you just need to do your duty, and the thing you're spying for becomes more important than your own concealment, and you just have to do it. That's not to say it happens every day or anything. I mean, if it does then you're really doing something wrong. I had a guy I'd go on missions with, and every frickin' time I'd be sat in a tree or on a telephone pole or something and the next thing I know the whole shooting match, literally, like, is goin' off and there's Agent whoever the hell he was, lying stretched on the floor or against a wall or somewhere, trying his damnedest to look like an empty potato chip packet or a pickle jar, and he'd be out of action for a little while, only to pop up four weeks later at another site, getting shot up yet again. To be honest, I think he had something wrong with himself, he was just way too into his heroics. And his version of heroics always wound up with him getting filled with bullet holes, flopping around on the ground.
So it brings us up to now, nowadays, sittin' in dank bars and so forth, meetin' up with the young coal miners because all the ones you went to school with are long gone, man, hopefully to Bermuda or somewhere and not six feet under, and we, us guys in the wars, as we call 'em, sit around and probably bore everyone with stories about stuff they had no idea was goin' on, right beneath their nose, and if they sat back and thought about it for a bit, oh man, oh man. It'd blow their minds, man, blow their minds right out the back and around the block once or twice.
disclaimer:
It's unseasonably warm weather here at the moment, that's all we can think of that might explain, well, stuff.
Still no sign of the Head Editor, who appears to maybe have dropped off the face of the planet.
This is Will Murphy, signing off, yet one more time, baby.
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