I didn’t always live like a king in my palatial 50 acre estate in Aspen Colorado complete with a stunning vista of the Rockies, a swimming pool, and my very own harem. No, for a long time I was one of the humble little folk content to toil my days away in menial jobs just barely scraping by on orange rinds and thin, watery gruel. It was during my time at one of these “jawbs” that I met a man who showed me how to live, and more importantly, how to love. This man is Big Mike, and this is his tale.

Background

Big Mike was my coworker at a painting job for a major university. Our duty consisted of preparing and painting student apartments for incoming residents, and it was specifically my duty to supervise a crew of semi-retarded hobos whom we picked up off the street and handed paint brushes. As the crew leader it was my job to make sure our elite squad completed projects on schedule, while at the same time avoiding total destruction of what we were painting. In this way Big Mike immediately established himself as my arch nemesis. You see, Big Mike liked to break things. Often.

A little about Big Mike: He was hired as part of a round of at least 20 new employees, and us painting old timers knew very little about the incoming new guys, save the size of their shirts which arrived just previous to their starting date. A couple smalls, a box of mediums, lots of larges, a few extra larges, then there was a box of new drop cloths that came at the same time…wait. Holy shit those aren’t drop cloths at all! Those are shirts! The remainder of the time was spent speculating what kind of person was going to claim the massive shirts come starting day.

Big Mike stood 5′7″ and weighed a good 350 lbs. Portly is a good word to describe him, but lunar would be a better one. Despite his size he was still able to move and work with great efficiency, and to this day I believe that there was an Olympic athlete underneath the excess flesh. So yes he was a large guy, but that isn’t what made Big Mike so great. The coolest thing about him was that he gave not one fuck the entire time he worked with me, and though he screwed up more than anyone on the entire crew he had a whole group of people covering for his incompetent ass just because of how lovable he was.

Big Mike Breaks a Window

Some apartments we painted had long, narrow stairways that terminated 3 feet from a window at the bottom. We generally keep our equipment on the first level because nobody wants to drag buckets of supplies up the stairs. Sometimes though, supplies that were needed on one floor managed to find their way to the other. It was customary in these situations to ask those on the other floor to bring the needed supplies to you instead of hunting around the apartment all day.

It just so happens that Big Mike was working upstairs in one of these apartments when our supervisor required an extension from the top floor. An extension is basically a stick, made of metal, that you can slide onto a roller frame to… extend your reach. Don’t ask it’s technical. Other uses for extensions include hitting home runs, breaking knee caps for the mob, and jabbing wild animals if they so happen to attack you during your day’s work.

Supervisor: “Hey, Big Mike, could ya hand me the extension up there” (Our supervisor is basically Hank Hill.)

*several silent seconds pass*

*extension comes somersaulting down the stairs and dives straight through the window*

Supervisor: “Welp…”

This was the first inkling we had that Big Mike was a lazy bastard. Ah well, everyone makes a mistake once in a while, and Big Mike was a good guy. He plays the Saxophone for christ sake, so you know he’s mellow customer.

Big Mike and the Chili Cheese Burgers

Lunch break for the day was half an hour, and with several wonderful and nutritious fast food chains located nearby, it was common for the crew to partake of an establishment’s drive through window. Big Mike’s eatery of choice was Wendy’s. One fateful day, Big Mike’s trip to Wendy’s netted him two double cheeseburgers and one of those cups of chili. Not an excessive amount of food, but not paltry either. The horror was in the execution of this meal, wherein Big Mike decided it would be a grand idea to pour the chili on top of the two cheeseburgers and eat the resulting soup. I dunno, maybe the chili acts as a form of external digestion similar to Jeff Goldblum’s character in The Fly.

Big Mike is an incredibly sloppy individual when it comes to his belongings. I am sure the work truck we used is still full of McDonald’s wrappers, orange peels, and various other amenities usually associated with homeless folks. This meal was no different. In the course of consuming the soggy mass of chili, buns and meat several good sized chili beans were sent gleefully prancing toward the carpeted floor of the office. Big Mike was perfectly willing to leave them to compost naturally right in the middle of the floor, and thereby continuing the circle of life, but several coworkers protested. “Big Mike!?!”

This set in motion a series of magical events that can only be described as transcendent for myself and those who witnessed the occasion. Big Mike stooped down to pick up the beans, and of course does a half-assed job leaving several chili beans in their place. When this was pointed out to the big man, his laziness somehow went into overdrive, rather like nitrous in a ricer’s Subaru WRX. He then proceeded to stomp the remaining beans into the carpet with all 350 lbs of his weight, reducing them to a fine paste that immediately merged with the carpet itself. He fixed my coworkers in his steely gaze and intoned, “Fuck it.”

Fuck it. That statement itself sums up Big Mike’s approach to a lot of things. I have it on good faith that he is doing well and currently “fucking it” in Las Vegas, Nevada as I write these words. Perhaps more adventures await Big Mike in the future. I can only hope to witness his awesomeness again some day.

-Andy