Assisting Ed

When I was in my mid twenties I worked in the accounting department of an electronic firm located about halfway between Fort Worth and Dallas. We also had an assembly plant in Mexico and I had a new boss, a nervous little man, Ed.

Ed had only been on the job for a few weeks when an urgent accounting issue required that he fly to the Mexico plant to review material receipts and product movement. Ed did not know the products, the material handling procedures or Ramon, whom he needed to meet with.  I was asked to assist him on the trip. I had no idea how much assistance Ed was going to need. He had never been to Mexico.

On the morning of our early flight we met in a Kmart parking lot and he drove us, in his little sports car, to Love Field. On the flight he told me over, and over again, to drink only bottled water or American soda and to absolutely leave the fruit alone.  He was terrified of eating or drinking something and getting sick.

Upon our arrival we were escorted into a meeting room where everyone was just beginning to celebrate Ramon’s birthday. The only refreshments were fruit pastries and chocolate milk. Ed ate the pastries and drank the milk. He told me later he did so because he was afraid of creating an international incident if he did not. At lunch we ate mystery meat, potatoes and some more fruit. We drank iced tea. Ed twitched all afternoon.

Our flight out that afternoon was delayed by bad weather. Ed started hitting the scotch, straight, as soon as he found a bar for us to wait in. Once our plane took to the air he drank all of the scotch the flight attendant had on hand. He was desperately trying to kill any ‘revenge’ bug that he may have consumed.

Our plane landed at 9:00 p.m. and Ed was very, very, drunk. I had to drag him to his car where I propped him up and started going through his pockets for his keys; he thought I was getting friendly. I opened the door and shoved him in. When I reached across him to buckle his seat belt his hands went to roaming. There was a lot of hand slapping, (Three Stooges style), that took place and I finally told him he had to buckle his own seat belt. He did not and I did not care. I got in the car and stared at the stick shift; I had never driven a car with a stick shift.

We left the Love Field parking lot about 10:30 p.m.  Most of the time lapse between the 9:00 landing and leaving the parking lot was from trying to reverse out of our parking space.  The car jerked and died every time I put on the brake, tried to go forward or changed gears.  Whenever I killed the engine Ed hit the dashboard…or the side window…or fell across the stick shift on the console.  The trip from the airport to where I had left my car was about a 15 minute drive. We arrived at my car at midnight. I was exhausted but thrilled to be getting rid of Ed who was, quite possibly, in a coma; he was in no shape to drive home.  Since he was dead to the world I pulled him up out of the floor board, sat him upright in the passenger seat, buckled his seat belt and finger combed his hair (which was standing straight up).  I locked him in his car and left him. I found a phone booth and called his wife to tell her that I had just dropped him off at his car. I did not give her any other details. I do not know how, or when, he got home.

Ed did not come back to work for a week. His wife called in and reported that he must have picked up a flu bug because he had severe aches and pains and was too dizzy to drive. He never went to Mexico again.  I bought a new car a few months later. It had a stick shift. I smiled the whole time I owned it.