The day was Thursday, the day I clean Admiral Doolittle’s pool. The Old Man, as we affectionately call him at Gotham NAS, is also my bodacious wife’s grandfather. I dreaded the entire ride over to his house. I felt another excruciating Trigeminal Neuralgia attack bubbling underneath my left cheek as I thought of him asking me once again when Brooke and I were going to give him his first great granddaughter. I feel like telling him, “You can’t rush greatness.”
Apprehensively I opened the pool gate. I braced myself for the cantankerous cigar chomping man to verbally assault my tender left ear with his nonstop asking about his future great granddaughter. I could literally feel the TN attack tapping underneath my left cheek as I silently began checking the pool’s vital chemical supply.
I nervously peered around the corner to see if he was sitting at a table reading the front page of the Gotham Guardian, the number one rag in town. I breathed a sigh of relief seeing an empty table and continued to stealthily perform my duty. I bravely tipped toed to the edge of the silent pool.
One timid look over my shoulder and I went to work. I collected the water sample, pulled out the phenol red, and dropped five red drops into the sample. I vigorously shook it and smiled, the water sample was perfect. Then I saw an eight legged crustacean in the water. “Foxtrot,” I muttered, for if the old man saw it, he would be more crotchety than ever.
I fished the small blue crab and set it down on a concrete tile. The tiny crab made no attempt to scurry away as it stood next to my large shoe. I gently tapped it with my shoe, it slightly moved to the right, stopped, and sat down. “Whatcha got there?!?!?”
I nearly jumped out of my epidermis. I placed a quivering hand on my heaving chest as I turned around to face the voice that addressed me. “CAG! What are you doing here?” I breathlessly gasped as I felt the inevitable TN attack simmering under my left cheek.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Commander Quinn stated.
“I fished out a little crab,” I answered lightly kicking the sea creature in question. The tiny thing momentarily stood up and sat back down. “I think the pool’s acid and chlorine have the poor thing is on his way to Davy Jones’ Locker.”
“Hot diggity dog lieutenant! You did it again!” an excited Quinn exclaimed and slapped my shoulder.
“I what?” I replied full of incredulous joy.
“Just like you privatized international relations with Australia and Russia, now you’ve given life to Gotham NAS’ new drug Public Service Announcement,” the old A-4 Skyhawk pilot grinned.
“New PSA?” I was too busy trying to ignore the oozing pain in my left cheek to fathom an answer.
“Yes, my boy, taking bad acid will leave you a little crabby…”
I really hope Commander Quinn doesn’t quit his day job.
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