"How long you been doin' this?" the store manager asked as I hunched over my rig.
"About sixteen years now," I said as I rack-focused the lens off a long row of gleaming iPods, "I think I'm gettin' the hang of it."
The portly electronics geek chuckled at my pat answer and ran his eyes over my Sony XDCam. I was twisting the focal tube when he flummoxed me...
"So what's the coolest thing you ever done with one of these?"
I looked up abruptly from the viewfinder and stared into space. A thousand scenarios flickered inside my head...
...Plucking leaves off treetops from the basket of a hot air balloon, floating over school buses after a biblical flood altered my homeland, stalking deputies as they swung axes on an early morning moonshine bust, driving Unit 4 through a Class 2 hurricane with the car speakers set at 11, hanging off a balcony full of drunk Halloween revelers as illegal fireworks arced and sparked over crowded downtown streets, running from an out-of-control truck and giggling about it moments after, watching the sun rise over the Mile High Bridge at Grandfather Mountain, leaning over a surgeon's shoulder as he sliced into an nice lady's eyeball, chasing SWAT team cops up a training tower as flashbangs echoed off concrete walls, hunkering on the edge of the stage as my favorite college band played their final show, breakdancing underwater with a drowning fancycam, following cops through the door as they rounded up drug-dealers, hovering under the belly of a giant tanker jet in flight as the attack helicopter I was riding in took on fuel...
"Man, that's a tough one," I offered feebly. "I once met Enos from 'Dukes of Hazzard'.
The manager's eyebrows wrinkled behind his bus-window frames as he pursed his lips. "The new X-boxes are over here," he said and walked off, assuming I'd follow. I did, a little less cocky about my exploits but newly determined to come up with a better answer to a question I'd surely hear again. Maybe next time, I'll simply hand them a business card with my web address on it. Anything's better than Enos.
2 comments:
Don't you just hate it when you think of all the right answers when it's too late?
Slinger, I have the same issue. I usually tell people about the time I interviewed Ernest Borgnine in his cool custom bus in eastern North Carolina. I don't know why he always come to mind. He's my Enos.
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