“Welcome aboard, son.  Now grab a bucket and start bailing, ‘cos the ship’s going down,” the man seated next to him grinned and laughed, “Can you believe that?  That was pretty much how I was welcomed to my first real job after I got out of college – come on in, we’re going out of business.  Unbelievable,” he shook his head and chuckled to himself, “And in keeping with long established company policies, our plan will be ill-conceived from the start and poorly executed going forward.”  The man paused for a moment and looked out the window to his right, overlooking one of the plane’s huge wings.

“Well,” he continued, sort of lolling his head back over to the left so he could see his neighbor in the adjacent seat, “It was a lousy job anyways.  I mean, what kind of a company sells chopsticks and wool hats?  What’s the demographic, Iceland and Shanghai?  Nah, I was much better off in the long run to escape that scenario and get hooked up with a real company, you know?” and he flopped his head back toward the window once again.

“I just wish we’d take off already, what’s the holdup here,” he said as he craned his neck to look over the head of the person in the row in front of him, apparently hoping to identify the cause of the delay.

“Can’t see anything, including a reason we’re still sitting on the ground,” he mumbled under his breath and then in a more conversational tone, “Probably somebody in First Class has got their tray in the downright and unlocked position, right?”

“pah-pah-pah-pa-pah-pah…,” he pursed his lips and made small noises while he rummaged through the rear-pouch of the seat in front of him, pausing here and there to briefly peruse an item before dropping the airline literature back into place.

“You know, if you’re going to stab me in the back in the long run, I’d prefer that you just stab me in the face right now,” he said, “save all the running around and foolishness, you know?” he grinned again, “I’ve learned that over my years in the old sales game.  I don’t mind being bested by someone who’s better than me, just don’t humiliate me, right?  That’s my philosophy.  You can use that, if you like.”

He rolled up the wrinkled cuffs of his light blue dress shirt and then drummed on the upright and locked tray before him with his two index fingers, accompanying the rhythm with miscellaneous verbal gibberish.

“wappity-dap-dap-doodle-doo… dippity-dap-dap… yeah.”

“You know what I do now?” he asked suddenly, “I sell rubber tomahawks.”

He bobbed his head and went back to playing the drums for just a moment, before continuing, “Because somebody has to, right?  Rubber tomahawks don’t come from nowhere.”

“doodle-doodle-doodle-doo…”

“But it ain’t easy; I’ll tell you that.  Times are getting lean in the tomahawk racket.  See, the old Cowboys and Indians movies and TV shows just aren’t there anymore, they’re not driving the market like they used to.  These days it’s all plastic halberds and modeling clay,” he made a sour face, “frickin’ modeling clay… I swear, if I see one more shelf stuffed full of those cellophane wrapped bricks of gray putty, I’m gonna beat somebody to death with one of my tomahawks,” and he made a chopping motion with his hand, “and it wouldn’t be a quick or easy process, either, because they’re rubber,” and he laughed again.

“And I did almost sell a whole bunch of units to this group of Clowns the other day, except they eventually all piled into this little car and sped off without buying…,” his voice trailed off.

“Oh, well, that’s life I guess.  You think you got the world by the horns and you wind up getting mounted by an angry bull, right?” he said with a wink.

The young man in the seat next to him, who had been quiet up until this point, looked at the traveling salesman and stated, “A wise man once said – ‘Cricket who tease midget often get face full of tiny shoe’.”

The rubber tomahawk vendor furrowed his brow, blinked a half-dozen times and then didn’t speak again for the rest of the flight.