The Little Blue Man

So I was on the airplane sitting in cramped coach on my way to a "professional growth" seminar that my employer "suggested" we all take once a year. We were all supposed to congregate at some second-rate hotel annually in Atlanta, or Dubuque, or Peoria, or some such "happenin'" town that always seemed to be somewhere in "America's Heartland", probably because the firm couldn't afford to grow us professionally on the coasts.

This year was no different. I boarded the plane for exciting Akron, Ohio ("The Rubber Capital of the World" the interoffice memo tepidly proclaimed) resigned to the fact that I'd be spending the next night sleeping in a "luxury suite" complete with the requisite cigarette burns in the carpet and lukewarm orange juice in the morning that somehow was considered "Continental" (what, they don't have adequate refrigeration on the continent?). But I didn't *have* to eat the hotel's continental breakfast... oh no. After all, the firm had provided me with a *handsome* per diem of $10!! I would live like a *king* in Akron, the world was my oyster, yadda yadda. Sigh.

With such visions of stale continental donuts dancing in my head I walked down the aisle of the plane, looking for 16B. I didn't like the sound of that, 16B. That didn't sound like an aisle seat, did it? But wait! This plane was one of those 2 - aisle - 3 affairs! Maybe I'd be lucky. Maybe B would be the aisle after all.

Nope.

So I resigned myself to the fact that I was sitting in B of an A-B-C row and plonked myself down. I barely noticed the passenger sitting in A, the window seat. When I looked that way again, however, my jaw dropped in shock, because there sitting next to me was a little blue man who couldn't have been more than eight inches tall and couldn't have weighed more than about 10 pounds wringing wet (though why a little blue man would be wringing wet I don't know; it's not like little blue men don't know how to use towels, but I digress). The little blue man looked my way and nodded.

This was too weird. This couldn't be happening. After all, the little blue man had assured me last week at the section meeting at work that he would *not* be going to Akron, but rather had to stay home and cat sit his neighbor's cat while she was on vacation.

Why, then, was he sitting right next to me, grinning his blue, toothless grin?

It simply did not make sense.