//------------------------------// // Prologue: Is this the real life? // Story: To Turn a Life Around // by TheEngineer //------------------------------// To Turn A Life Around A story by: TheEngineer Prologue: I stopped to take in my surroundings for the briefest of moments. Okay, most of this scenario is just perfectly normal to me: Dark sky with plenty of stars and a moon to match clearly visible since I am currently miles away from the city; and there’s also some grass, that’s pretty normal. So why am I three hundred feet from the road outside of my recently out of control car staring at the three most bizarre figures I have ever seen? There in front of me, a mere ten feet away from me lit only by my car’s headlights, lay three motionless and very colorful… Well, rather small horse… Things… How on Earth did I ever end up in a situation like this? My day started out perfectly normal. Brushed my teeth, took a shower, put my pants on one leg at a time, ate my breakfast and left for work respectively. Nothing wrong with that order! So what could have gone so wrong that… Ohhh, ponies; that’s what they are. Small horses are called ponies! Of course, how come I didn’t realize that at first? Was it that the bizarreness of this situation and all the pretty colors kept me from making that one coherent thought? Great, I am going insane, just going completely Looneytoons right now. And what does a completely insane person do when faced with this type of decision making? That person begins to take three colorful bundles of unconscious fur and puts them in the back seat of his car! It just makes perfect sense! -----------------Earlier that day-------------- Beep!Beep! Beep!Beep! Beep!Beep! Beep!Beep! Beep!Beep! I slowly woke up to the tormentor that is my alarm clock. “uhhhhgh” Seemed to be the only sound that came out of my mouth as I blindly reached for the off switch on that dammed and yet career saving device. After about two minutes of blindly flailing my arm around in fruitless effort, I gave in to the alarm clock’s wishes and got up. I shut off the alarm and look at the digital display, 6:03 am ugh, Tuesdays. With an all too practiced motion, I hopped out of bed and walked across the room to my faithful bathroom to take a nice and awakening shower. A rather quick shower, I was out in 10 minutes flat and made my way to my dresser as I dried myself. Crisp white shirt and dark brown slacks with a black belt and matching shoes along with my trusty clip on tie (What? There is a reason for it!). I went to go brush my teeth and quickly went downstairs and made myself a hasty breakfast that was equally hastily consumed. By 6:45am I was making my way to the driveway. ‘Hmm, SUV or sedan?’ I thought happily as I made my way into the gray sedan and began the hour and a half commute to work, my line of work being located at a commercial airline overhaul base in Pennsylvania. Juuuust in case you haven’t the faintest clue of what an overhaul base is or what it is for, I’ll just take the liberty of explaining. An aircraft overhaul base is where major maintenance or repairs are performed on aircraft, this is where planes are stripped to bare bones and inspected for the smallest of flaws and fixed to “Acceptable Flight Capacity” or higher (Ha! The look on a civilian's face when I say acceptable flight capacity is just priceless! There is a reason a lot of things that are done to the planes that people fly in are put in friendlier terms or not spoken of altogether). What is my occupation you may ask? I work there as an AMT (its short for Aviation Maintenance Technician) and I specialize mostly with composite materials, which is good considering the rise in its popularity thanks to the Boeing777 models. … I arrived at the OB rather quickly that day, about fifteen minutes earlier than usual. Found my parking spot, walked at a leisurely pace and clocked in on my way to the lockers. As I opened my locker I noticed something was off… was it? No. Wait, the lock was missing? THE LOCK WAS MISSING? I franticly looked through my locker only to stop myself and realize that nothing was actually gone or out of place. Sighing with a mind full of personal embarrassment I pulled out my set of coveralls, slid myself in, and slowly shuffled my way to the office to get my assignment. “Hey, Anderson!” came a familiarly booming voice, I turned to meet a rather cheery foreman. “Mornin’ Mr. Simons” I called back as he made his way to me. “I am very pleased to see you come early today, your shift doesn’t start in ten minutes and we have a rather heavy job on our hands!” responded my foreman. I immediately knew what heavy job meant in his vocabulary, it meant someone in the previous shift messed up big time; this line of work isn’t as low as being a grease monkey in a garage, it pays well and the hours are good, but sometimes it can really give you a massive workload. “Ughh, what did the grave yard shift do sir?” I inquired. “Well, this 777 came in as a regular overhaul but somebody thought it was a perfectly dandy idea to leave the safety pins on one of the landing gears out. When we shut off the hydraulics, the portside wing got smashed on the ground. I tell ya’, that man is going to get a serious suspension for that”. Oh just perfect I thought, I hate having to laminate those layers of aramid. The panels keep getting so fuzzy, and when that happens you can’t actually use it anymore because it promotes corrosion….. … nine hours later Well, that was the end of my shift. Normally an overhaul takes about two weeks, between stripping the plane off all of its paint, skin and flooring and having it put back together, it takes time. But this mess, this is going to take much more, maybe four or five weeks. Whatever, that is not my problem until Thursday, and until then I will relax. It’s still five o’ clock-ish, I can go to the park for a bit, and then buy a new lock for tomorrow (that would be useful), maybe some groceries….. . . . . . … Wow, time flew by really quickly. I guess that happens when your day was, for the lack of a better word, boring. My thoughts began to wander- At least I got paid and there are no current tragedies occurring in my life anD HOLY CANOLE WHAT TIME IS IT?! A lot later than usual is what it is! Wow! 11:29pm , if I don’t hurry the lig- was the last thought that ran through my mind when all the lights in this back road to my home, suddenly but right as scheduled, shut off. It was really dark and there was nobody around, so I solved my issue by giving my headlights a little more juice aaaand there, crisis adverted. I was only thirty minutes drive from my destination, home sweet home, when my uneventful day decided to swap out its title for a shiny new ‘what went wrong?’ kind of day. At first it was only a small light off to the left side of the road, where there was a… There really wasn’t anything there, huh. At first I simply chose to ignore the light and continue my way home, for I was oh so very tired, but this rather persistent light wanted attention. The light suddenly grew both in size and intensity and I was both blinded and freaking out. “What the actual FU-!“ That last syllable escaped me as I ran over something I could not see and heard a loud pop of which I am sure originated from a tire connected to this car and I quickly lost control, swerving to the left. Once I got my vision back, the first thing I saw made me push on the brake as hard as I could, not caring if I were to slam my face into the steering wheel (which thankfully, I did not) and simply stared at the sight before me. With my mouth pretty much hitting the floor I staggered my way out of the car and I stopped to take in the sight before me… ----------------Present----------------- Lifting three ponies into the back seat of a sedan wasn’t all that difficult, they were actually surprisingly light. Each pseudo-pony thing weighed 70 pounds, give or take, which left me with enough energy to check the other side of my car and assess the damage. With an exasperated sigh I just muttered to myself “Today was just perfect, simply the one day I dreamed of since I was small. This just had to happen today huh? Of all days, you, the stupid tire had to pick the most bizarre to just explode out of the blu-! black.” I kinda finished that thought realizing how dark it is out here. I hastily replaced the shredded tire, what did I run over exactly? And then began my way home. Once I found my precious road to home, I stopped the car as I spotted what tore my tire to bits, one hell of a big piece of jagged metal that I can only assume was once the bumper of a really old car. I just drove around it and hoped nothing else would get in between me and my bed. Finally I managed to come home. I made my way to the driveway and gave myself some time to think in the car, after ten seconds of blank thoughts I shut off the engine and began hauling these colorful ponies into the house while making sure no one was looking. It really was not that hard to be discreet since the closest house to mine was a few acres away. After some struggling, I managed to get the three pseudo-pony things in the house and when the door was shut and the lights were off, I simply slumped on the nearest wall and drifted into a dreamless sleep.