Mamas, Don't Let Your Young Babies Grow Up To Be Dragons

Thanks to Andy Whitman and Cindy Collins for inspiring this!

I met Smaug's parents once just outside Düsseldorf. They were pretty embarrassed about their son. In his Mom's words (recorded on a Grundig reel to reel tape recorder) "We taught that boy better. So destructive, but of course our home was blown up in the war, you know, we barely got all the gold out, and then we had to roast the Nazis because they wanted to take it. About the only thing that dragon got right was his name; he never said 'Smog' even though it was all the rage. And he could make such a nice fire, if only he hadn't run around roasting everyone like some sort of flying volcano. Here, would you like some more Schnapps?"

Of course what she really said was,

"Wir brachten den Jungen besser. So destruktiv, aber natürlich wurde unser Haus in den Krieg geblasen, wissen Sie, wir kaum stand das Gold aus, und dann mussten wir die Nazis zu braten, weil sie wollte, es zu nehmen. Über die einzige, was die Drachen bekam Recht war sein Name, er sagte nie 'Smog', obwohl es der letzte Schrei Und er konnte so ein schönes Feuer zu machen, wenn nur er nicht herumlaufen Rösten jeder wie eine Art fliegende Vulkan.. Hier, möchten Sie noch mehr Schnaps?"

I hope Google translated it into English properly.

With Two You Get Tachycardia

At one point in my software career I was responsible for developing, maintaining, and supporting a certain piece of software[1]. At this point I happened to sit between the marketing and marcomm folks at work. A vendor brought each of those departments (one and two people respectively) a gift basket.

The free coffee at this particular job was pretty bad. Coffee shops were nowhere near as ubiquitous as they are today. I rode a motorcycle to work so a travel mug wouldn't work. The only thermos I trusted to survive on a bike cost over $100, so most days I made do with the caffeinated nastiness they called coffee. Working 60-70 hours a week and working with youth evenings and weekends, I needed the caffeine.

Remember those gift baskets? Included in each was a quart of chocolate covered espresso beans. Since none of the recipients cared for those, they ended up on my desk. around noon I could have kissed my co-workers; they were speaking my love languages-- chocolate and espresso!

These were really good chocolate covered espresso beans. They were practically magical beans, delicious and potent. I'd munch a couple, work on code or documentation, munch a couple, support a customer, munch a couple...

Matthew, Pam, and Angela began to laugh as I typed faster and talked faster to customers. It got to the point I asked what they were laughing about. "You can't type that fast!"

"Huh!" I thought. "Not before now, anyway."

About two o'clock they all came to my cube. "Dude, what are you doing?"

"I'm working! What are you doing? What are you staring at?" I looked down. My hands were off the keyboard, but my fingers were still going a mile a minute, practically a blur. On the desktop.

"Stop that!" I told my fingers. I don't think they even knew I had spoken. I moved my hands off the desk, but found that as I talked they kept moving. I thought if speed freaks I'd known in college, and said so. I spoke too quickly, with far more words than necessary and plenty of stuttering.

Pam started. "Did you eat two whole cans in two hours???" She picked up an empty chocolate covered espresso bean can.

Matthew picked up the other one. "He ate half this one. I'm going to put it in my desk until tomorrow."

"That's probably a good idea," I said. Or thought, anyway. The way it came out was, "Hey! No! Gimme those!"

Pam and Angela blocked the way as Matthew carried the rest of the food of the gods off. Relieved and infuriated, I growled a thanks, sat back down, and returned to thrashing my poor keyboard.

I'd calmed down enough by 6PM they let me ride my motorcycle to dinner.

They were gone when I got back from eating. I was proud of my self control; I had no more magical beans that night.

Mainly because Matthew locked his desk.

 

Notes
1. Its name was Co-Xist, which is utterly irrelevant to the story so why are you reading this?