The Irv Sholtbin Story.

Irv Sholtbin, who lured some youthful miscreants to my Method Acting class under cover of darkness as a favor to an exceptionally slim transgender mortgage broker he'd been dating over the holidays, seemed just a tad disappointed when I finally revealed to him that I was looking to leave the field and move to Manitoba, Sweden. I'd found out there was a service there specializing in training infants to silently deliver messages of all kinds, including the kind that most folks might find just a little bit 'icky' if they thought about it for more than the five or six seconds it might take them to tie their shoes. If it was a day that they were wearing loafers, then that would be all to the good. Some people, though, believe the old wives' tale that loafers would make someone look fat. That couldn't be further from the truth.

You've got to watch certain persons very closely because if you take your eyes off them for just a moment or two, they could be gone in a way that appears to happen very quickly, even though the planning could have taken months, or at least weeks. And if that includes downtime and third-party transfers, you're talking  major financial exposure.

I've decided that if this is to be my last year in the Pit, then there's really no downside to monitoring your dietary regime in as little as sixty-two seconds or less. The more I think about it, the more the whole scheme just feels right. A grim façade will be erected at the exact location where I learned to express my feelings with a sterling clarity. Each and every one of the people I've told about this agrees that the specialty of a boastful servant in subverting societal norms should not be enough to merit the involvement of Michigan Law Enforcement. I beg to differ. If lines are drawn in a way that resembles an innocent child's stick-figure drawing, then one will get you two that our plan will fall flat like a lamp fixture in an abbreviated explosion of perimeters.

The way a nurse I used to know who liked to, in effect, tickle her own neck with a feather she recovered from a crash site, would get on my nerves in a way I can't begin to explain. Even though I wasn't the one being tickled, just to be clear. If I thought I could deliver an anonymous complaint to her Supervisor, or maybe just invite him to lunch at the club, I'd know there was no turning back. The case I keep in my official compartment would no longer be made available, as I was on waivers. I figured if I just moved slowly enough, few would notice and the plot I was about to hatch might get the go-ahead and we'd all be home free. What I didn't take into account was the bold action of a particular aviator of my acquaintance. He'd been surveilling my house since the end of the second Iraq War due to a scheduling dispute. I liked the way his wife flounced around the Mall in a way that suggested she might just know a little something. About flouncing, that is. Like, just how does one learn to flounce in the first place? The second place? There is no 'second place', just a mildly tired face. Oh, and winner take all! 

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