“And that,” he said, “is your life narrated by Douglas Adams.”
“What?”
“Well you sound like Douglas Adams,” he said again, “the guy who wrote Hitchhiker’s?”
“I have never had anyone say that to me,” I said, not surprisingly.
“Obviously you don’t sound like him physically, you know. Just the way you choose your prose and narration.”
This is, I’m not going to lie, the last thing I ever expected to hear from a Marine. It’s not that I don’t know Marines are smart or that I think they don’t read. Yet still, here was this chemical engineer talking to me about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and all I could think about was how I’d just heard a Marine talk about a book.
“Chemical engineer?” he always says. “I guess that’s close enough.” He’s only been telling me once a month for about four years what it is he does. Last I remember he was researching how to turn garbage into fuel. Or something. He’s trained in how to deal with all types of hazmat spills so I would really like to have him around in the event of any spillage situations, but for some reason in the context of literature I don’t quite believe it.
Sorry, dude.
One of my favorite Marines is a physicist, so I’m sure I’ll get over it someday.
Hey, he needs to know about the Ozonator ng 1000!