I have recently been transferred within my company to a place with more room to grow and much more responsibility. Also, they needed the extra set of hands. Along with this move comes, naturally, new and interesting co-workers.
One co-worker is a rather large and jovial man, who loves his food, video games, and rhyming things, even when it doesn’t make sense to. “What’s over there, monkeybear?” “Open the door, Monsignor!” Also, total nonsequiturs: “That’s the price of fame in Hollywood.” This one is thrown in randomly whenever one of us is complaining.
Another co-worker, a very sleepy art student, likes to refer to the above co-worker as “precious”. “He’s precious,” he says. “He’s 40 years old going on 5.” There’s some truth to that. I will hereafter refer to the subject of this post as “Precious”.
Precious tends to get on Art Student’s nerves very easily, being first and foremost, quite precious, and second, Art Student is often very sleepy and rather cranky. Art Student is often not in the mood for Precious’ very preciousness, and tends to either tune him out when being spoken to, or is laterally rude to him in some small, self-satisfying way. Laterally because, despite the fact that Precious seems deathly allergic to any “real” work to be done around the place, he is well and truly harmless. One could easily make this man cry, and it wouldn’t be funny at all. It would be like purposely making a five year old girl cry.
So, one day Precious is prattling on and on in his usual manner to Art Student, while Art Student sleepily eyes the company television screen, only just imperceptibly nodding out of some ingrained sense of politeness. I am scurrying back and forth, too busy with the contents of my own clipboard to join in, but feeling the desperate strain emanating from Precious, trying very hard to impress Art Student with his story. I overhear bits and pieces of it:
Precious: It’s this new game, for the PC? It’s called Red Alert 3. It is totally awesome.
Art Student: blink
Precious: Okay, get this: It’s like, it’s in the past. You see, these Germans got a hold of time travelling technology, and so they go BACK IN TIME and kill Einstein. Because, you know, Einstein was allied with the Soviets.
Me: looks up from clipboard, blinks
Precious: So, okay, they get RID OF EINSTEIN. He’s gone. BUT! When they come back to the present day, they weren’t prepared for what they found. Get. This: THE EMPIRE OF JAPAN.
Art Student: Oh, yeah? long pause Reaally.
Precious: Yeah! And you get all these really cool weapons. Oh, man! You will NEVER guess what you can shoot out of your guns as ammo. Get THIS:
pause
Art Student: blink
Me, frozen, curious: blink
Precious: ARMOURED. POLAR BEARS.
I had to leave so I could bust a gut laughing in the other room. I laughed until I cried. I couldn’t get the image of polar bears, in full metal armor, flying through the air, claws extended. It was the best imagery ever. It was every boychild’s greatest fantasy come true. Guns that launched armoured polar bears. That would show the enemies what’s what around here! How crazy are we? We got friggin’ armoured polar bears.
I was so amused by the whole thing that it was hard to hide my sheer glee when asking him occasionally about armoured polar bears. He brought me in a page he printed out the other day, with a picture of a large tank called the Bullfrog, which had a large opening in the back, such as to contain a cannon or somesuch.
“See?” Precious says, pointing at the hole. “That’s where the armoured polar bears come out.”
Why, that’s the best thing I’ve ever heard! 
