Darth

Looking back, he’d had a really bad time with his first job, after leaving school.

It was all down to the site supervisor. He was a nasty piece of work. None of the workers liked him. He was coarse and rude and never had a good word to say. He never gave credit for any of the work carried out on site. He was generally regarded as evil by those who worked under him. The school leaver hated him with a vengeance! It was because of his black bomber jacket and black beanie, he had been given the most appropriate nickname of Darth. When he strolled onto the company’s latest construction site, he certainly looked like the baddie from the movie. Despite this, the young man liked the job and found he was able to learn a lot from the various tradesmen that he worked under.

All this was at a time when the country was experiencing a prolonged downturn in the economy and the construction industry was hit hard. Job opportunities were becoming scarce. He started out as a site gopher or general dogsbody who was on call nonstop. This was how he became familiar with other trades. The work was hard, but the pay was good.

As a result of this, he was determined to hang on to his job at all costs. This meant dealing with Darth in his own way. In the main this consisted of him having murderous thoughts about the boss on an ongoing basis. In other words, whenever he came on site he would imagine different ways of polishing him off. These were relatively moderate at first, with ideas about opening up his lunchbox and sprinkling rat poison on his sandwiches or pouring poison into his tea flask. As time went on, thoughts of pushing him off one of the upper floors or dropping something extremely heavy on him from a height were his favourites. However, over the years, these powerful fantasies culminated with him being satisfied with regularly imagining beating him to death with a shovel.

After spending the first half a dozen years of his working life with the construction company, he moved on to join a small firm in the housing sector. By that time he’d had enough experience as a brick layer to take up the trade. He had been working for the firm for around a year when it happened. He’d been out visiting friends and was returning home late in the evening. Coming back into town he saw a man stagger out of the pub. He strolled out into the middle of the street and stopped to take his phone out of his pocket. He recognised him straight away. The man just stood there looking at his phone. It was Darth! The man himself. The evil swine who had caused so much hatred and with it the burning desire for revenge.

As his car drew closer, the man didn’t even look up. He just stood there, head down.

At the last moment he yanked on the steering wheel and swerved around him.

For some, with the years comes wisdom.