AUSTIN THE POWERLESS
A FICTIONAL STORY
INCLUDES ALL CHAPTERS
He died a
natural death---if there is such a thing. Prior to his ICU flat line, he
certainly did not live a natural or normal life.
Austin Corrington
grew up in a family that Ozzie and Harriet would have envied. In school, Austin
was a Jeopardy multi-day winner in
waiting.
On the
hardwood and the manicured infield he was a good, not great, player. Playing
beyond high school never entered his mind. His athletic ability was restricted
by his slender build and below average upper body strength. Charles Atlas would
have loved him.
The ivy-covered
walls of his Land Grant University surrounded more students than the entire
population of his home county. Once more he excelled in the classroom. Upon
graduation, he entered the United States Air Force. There he was considered one
of the up and coming “Below the Zone” hot prospects that warranted promotion
and worthy of top assignments ahead of his contemporaries.
So far so
good, so natural and so Austin! However, during his entire life he would be
considered in the bottom quartile in the arena of social interaction. His
social life was as anemic as his upper body strength. He readily admitted he
ate too many cheese and peanut butter crackers from a nearby Gulf gas station
and drank too many Cokes growing up. On an asphalt- melting late August day, he
was working for a farmer that provided a tube of ice cold, eight ounce, glass
bottles of Coke. Austin bragged he consumed 18 that day!
A brief
summary of his dating experiences may cast some much needed light on his social
development trajectory. He first kissed a girl when he was 16, she was 15.
On the night
of the Junior-Senior Prom, Austin had a date with a girl who came very close to
sexually assaulting him. He quickly took her home and was in his home at 11pm.
Later in life, he would discover that girls sexually matured much earlier than
boys. His mother had never told him that bit of this biological trivia.
The
aggressive behavior of another girl almost made him a candidate for the SVU
television program. Her bold attack was only blunted when he repeatedly told
her he had no intention of marrying her. He never dated either of these two
girls again. Years later he saw both of these much, much older women at a high
school reunion. He said a silent
thanksgiving prayer that he did not marry either one!
In college,
Austin was hardly a date-every-night playboy. However, he was never a candidate
for the wall flower of the year award. Sometimes he displayed a sarcastic,
maybe even cruel, sense of humor. He had three girls who he dated when not in
college. They lived in close proximately of each other in his home county. To
fully understand what happened you must understand that this was in the day of
typewriters, carbon, and thin onion skin paper. He sought to terminate his
relationship with the trio of girls and have some fun at the same time. The
syrupy love letter was made in three copies and the space after the “My most
precious” line was left blank. Prior to sending the letters he filled in the
name of each girl in ball point pen. Surely, the three would get the joke and
realize he was breaking up with them.
Feeling
girlfriend free, he was shocked to get a letter from one of the “carbon copy”
recipients in which she stated she had shown her letter to a girl who had also
received a carbon copy love letter from this same college Romeo. The dump all
three at once plan worked; however, one girl wrote him to say she never wanted
to see him again. Wonder why?
It was every
college boy’s dream; Austin was in the college library at a study table and the
girl on the other side removed one of her shoes and slowly started rubbing his
leg with her now shoeless foot. BINGO! A frantic, short romance followed. What
the relationship lacked in duration it was more than off-set by intensity.
Austin told a friend in his dorm that Miss Footsy was his best kisser up to
that point! He later saw her in a restaurant with a much older man. He
theorized each got what they wanted!
One of his college
summer vacation romances was coming to an end and the girlfriend threw every insult
imaginable at Austin, including the worst breakup line he ever heard, “And my
sister doesn’t like you either!” It is one thing to have a girl dump you, but
something else again for her sister to pile on as well!
Austin
should have probably considered himself lucky because a high school friend once
told him that when he called it quits with a long-time girlfriend, her mother
did everything but hit him!
Somehow
Austin was made aware of the rumored, all-time break up story. A couple of very
intense high school sweethearts had a big league breakup and the girl ran
crying into her house and her grandfather came out with a shotgun. Fearing
death or serious injury, the fellow evaded the protective gun wielder and found
undetected refuge by crawling under a car! This account redefines “Any port in
a storm!”
The phrase
“Unlucky in Love” was likely first uttered with Austin mind. A late high school
romance was the fulfillment of a 12 year friendship. It seemed as if the
goddesses of Love had it in for Austin. Strange events too numerous to recount,
served to slowly dissolve this deeply felt romantic attachment, at least from
Austin’s viewpoint. Even being told by
Cindy Ann of her intimate encounter with a fellow Austin knew, did not dash his
ardor for her. However, the fatal destructive arrow was yet to strike his
heart.
Austin,
unlike his father and younger brother, disliked farm work. Austin was a
dreamer, a person of books and big ideas. However, it was farm work that
provided him with gas and movie money.
One day he was working alongside a high school classmate on a nearby
farm when out of the blue, an unannounced arrow struck its mark. “Guess, you
heard Cindy Ann got married?” Austin tried to remain unfazed, but he really
wanted to cry and vomit, or at least run until he died. Somehow he made it
through the day without doing either. Years later, he confided in his best
friend that he thinks of Cindy Ann every day, often several times a day!
It was
helpful for Austin to later discover God has thoughts and plans that are
entirely different from ours. Enter a girl who was a blind date. They were
comfortable and relaxed around each other and a long courtship followed. It was
love with blue jeans on. After several
unavoidable separations, Austin and Polly were married.
Like most
marriages, careers and kids, later grandkids, filled their lives. Austin was
the poster child for being unorganized. Polly repeatedly reminded him “that’s
not the way my Dad would do it.”
Austin’s relationship with Polly’s father was forced co-existence. Once
her father raised his fist to strike Austin, Polly’s mother halted possible
injury to one or both.
Austin once
heard a stand up TV comedian say, “Marriage is a lot like a night at the boxing
matches, sometimes the pre-lims are better than the main event!” Several years
of marriage proved the accuracy of this humorous wisdom.
During one
particular argument, Polly shouted out that she never really enjoyed intimate
relations and merely learned how to fake it! Austin’s self-esteem and manly ego
died, then and there, but the burial would have to wait until the rest of
Austin caught up, might be better said, let down. As the months passed, irrational
thoughts of divorce, suicide, even running away, ricocheted off the walls of
his fractured mind.
Even though
Austin promised himself to avoid discussing this hurtful topic again, he
violated his own promise and several times tried unsuccessfully to have her
explain not only her bombshell statement, but several obvious Oscar-winning
performances when Austin returned from long business trips. It all of a sudden
made sense to Austin why Polly had always been a fan of the UNC Tar Heels’
basketball team. She had learned how to stall and “Run OutThe Clock!” Austin
learned to survive and how to take long cold showers.
Years
slouched by and Father Time and Miss Gravity performed their unavoidable work
upon Austin and Polly. She became a TV recluse in her sewing room and often
randomly looked at her high school yearbook and Austin immersed himself in the
books he had collected, plus the untold millions of free volumes on the
Internet.
Polly found
his ashen and unresponsive body slumped over his computer which displayed a
prophetic Blue Screen. A frantic 911 call was made and six minutes later Austin
was in exam Room 13 at the ER of the nearest hospital. He was resuscitated two
times and a feeble heartbeat permitted Austin’s transfer to ICU.
His
condition remained unchanged and Polly had prepared herself for the worst.
About noon on a Saturday, Austin had the legendary last “Rally” and spoke
without oxygen to Polly, their children and most of their grandchildren. At the
insistence of her family that was staying at the nearby Olive Tree Hotel, Polly
left Austin’s bedside to take a quick shower, change clothes and return without
trying to sleep.
The hotel
room phone and several cell phones seemed to all ring at once. Each call simply
said, “Please come quickly.” The band of waiters and watchers rushed to his ICU
room. The hospital chaplain and Austin’s main doctor intercepted them as they
entered the ICU area. Words were not needed though they were appreciated: “Austin
Corrington died peacefully in his sleep.” They slowly walked into his now
machine less quiet room. The ICU charge nurse hugged Polly and silently nodded
to the rest of the family. She sincerely said, “Take all the time you need and
later we will talk about the funeral home.” Out of respect, she slowly walked
backwards from the room. Polly gave Austin’s corpse a third grade kiss and
started to sob. Family members simultaneously moved toward her and all the
while kept looking at the now fast approaching room temperature body. On the mobile
room tray was a freshly delivered couple of red roses in a vase with this note
attached: “Heard you are ill, my ex-sister-in-law and I are flying out to see
you” It was signed: “Forever your friend: C.A.” Polly asked rhetorically, "Who is C.A.?"
-----END----
