One of the benefits of my job is that I get to meet a lot of interesting people. Some people are definitely more interesting than most, and thus a blessing in this experiment called, life.

Today, I excavated for one of my favorite customers, Bob. Now Bob is great. He moved here from Hawaii and brought his taxi cab with him. Currently the cab is in the shop getting fixed but Bob can’t drive it right now anyway as he broke his hip a few weeks ago and the doc’s gave him a new hip. So Bob is trying to recover.

While working building him a great waterfall out of some really cool rocks I stopped to talk with Orvell, a man I have written stories about earlier. Orvell owns a rock pit and a few years ago got sucked up into his crusher where the the machine ripped off his arm. The doc’s gave him a 2% chance of survival. Years later, he runs around like nothing happened and works harder than ‘healthy’ men half his age.

Now, so far you have been introduced to two normal people. Bob, with a new hip and taxi who’s hobby is to study various Bible’s for hidden codes. And, Orvell, who proudly drives an old Mack dump truck with one hand as his other arm is just a stub.

Kind of a boring story for some, but it got interesting. Up drives a man who’s name already slipped out of my head as I’m horrible with names. But, his name is not important.

This man is 73 years old, drives a piece of shit white Toyota and just got out of the hospital after the doc’s completely removed his tongue. Maybe it sounds boring as cancer nowadays has a way of becoming mundane and boring.

But, this man had his whole tongue removed and REPLACED with a strip of muscle taken from his inner thigh…

Now THAT is cool! 73. Tough grizzled face much more tough than the modern day pussy boys trying to hide behind safe places and kitten video’s.

Orvell said the man could not talk yet and would not be able to for weeks. I thought, ‘horseshit’ so I asked him how it felt to now have a tongue coming from near his ass, or in other words, how would it feel now speaking out of his ass!

He almost blew snot out of that tough old face and his eyes danced. With his mouth open and drool rolling out, I understood perfectly… “It feels good!”

So, what is the meaning of tonight’s bit of writing? Not a damn thing of importance to most people as most people are too caught up in texting and deciding what gender they are. For me, today was excellent and I’m so glad to see the grit and tenacity some people still possess.

Imagine getting your arm ripped off by a machine, putting up with years of trying to stay alive, and driving a Mack truck (not easy) with one hand. Let alone, having your entire tongue cut out and replaced with a thigh muscle.

Maybe there is hope for humanity? A small hope true, but after meeting the three old men today, it made me smile.