The power of a god

In the summer between grades 10 and 11, I had a part-time job at MacDonalds. My favourite station was 'wash'– in the back room by myself washing all the equipment with the steaming hot sprayers.

I'm not sure what all the equipment was, I cannot remember. But it wasn't dishes. They don't have dishes at MacDonalds. I remember the fry baskets. It can't only have been fry baskets; but God, what if it was?

If it wasn't wash, then it was grill. Standing beside a hot greasy grill getting covered in grease. For a greasy pored high-schooler, the steam showers of wash seem the obvious choice over the grease showers of grill, and to this day I am not sure why I was always the only one volunteering for wash. But I am glad I was. I always was.

They would save wash for me if they knew I was coming on, but even with that, wash was only a couple of hours. I had to do my time on grill.

Cleanliness was a law at MacDonalds. As weird as some of the high-school workers could be, as gross as some of the stories we heard were, the managers were strict and alert, and would tolerate no nonsense.

But in a grease pit there are flies; there is probably no avoiding it. And those flies were fat. They lived the life of Riley amongst the grease and the overflow. They lived it, that is, until they didn't. Until we got them.

On grill, we would clean when we were not cooking. And that was the time for hunting flies. We would grab those fat buggers out of the air like Mr. Miyagi never could have imagined. Two at a time? No problem. Looking the other way? We called that a Steve Nash. Behind the head as it flew past. Child's play.

"Wash your hands!" the manager would shout, somehow always knowing when we caught one.

We were awesome, but those flies were fat. Since that summer, I've never been able to catch flies with the same level of artistry.

I don't care about flies in Korea. It's those damned mosquitoes that have to die. They are a devious beast, and this rotator cup injury I'm nursing doesn't help me one bit.

Slap. Slap. Slap. I'm all over the ceiling and walls, and hitting only one in three, on a good day.

"Me and the boys used to pick the wings off a fly as it would buzz past!" I say to my family. They just look at me and shake their heads. It isn't the doubt that hurts the most. It's the pity.

"When are you coming to bed?"

"Nobody can sleep until I get these bastards!"

It's pushing my marriage to breaking.

Then one day my wife comes home with a toy tennis racquet with a swivel head.

"Just one? How can we play without a pair of racquets?"

It is not a tennis racquet though. It has a button that lets a charge pass through it. It toasts mosquitoes. And those buggers don't have a chance.

I got 13 of them yesterday, and already have 4 this morning. There is no more one-in-three; if I see the bugger, it is gone. I am Thor, and this tennis racquet is my Mjolnir.

"I am THOR!"