He wasn’t exactly Benjamin Button, but it was curious nonetheless. It started small; so small in fact he didn’t even know it had begun. Only looking back did Joseph Johnson start to piece together the events of the past 6 months. It was the smallest toe on Joseph’s left foot. One day, April 30th to be exact, it just went numb. One of those things you never notice, until you notice it and then you can’t get it out of your mind. Joseph was working on a crossword puzzle and was stuck on the final 3 words. 37 across, “Latin for neighbor”; 78 across, “Chief Norse Deity”; and 22 down, “Word before many words”. Not the hardest crossword puzzle ever created; then again Joseph wasn’t exactly Stephen Hawking. No clue was the only answer that continually came into Joseph’s mind. He was in the crossword’s paradox; too stubborn to look up the answers and not smart enough to figure them out on his own. He was just about to fold up the paper and call it a day when it happened. Vacina was Latin for neighbor. How could he have possibly known that? Probably just a recall from a word of the day calendar or a ghost from crossword’s past. He supposed it wasn’t so strange to recall a word you didn’t realize you knew. And then it happened again. Odin was the Chief Norse Deity. What was happening? Five minutes ago he was barely sure what a deity was and would have thought Odin was Garfield’s nemesis. His thoughts were immediately disrupted when, without thinking, he began to fill in 22 down. Just as the final letter was being memorialized in the box and the crossword was completed, his toe went numb.
The next several days were pretty uneventful. His toe was still numb, but otherwise he was the same 43 year old man he’d always been. His greatest skill was being incredibly average at everything, but Joseph believed everyone was born with one incredible skill that set them apart from all others on Earth. He’d decided long ago that being pretty good at everything was superior in itself and he was okay with the notion he’d never be remembered for being abnormally unique. But he was wrong.
It was 17 days after his toe went numb that he noticed a disabled car by the local park. Joseph didn’t have a car; in fact Joseph had never driven a car in his life. The son of radical 1960’s Berkley parents, Joseph was raised to believe all things motorized were evil. He didn’t really carry those same beliefs, but never actually got around to getting his license. It was on his “to do” list somewhere between growing a vegetable garden and hiking in the Andes. He biked everywhere he went and was on his morning ride to work when he decided to pull over to help an attractive thirty-something woman in need of rescue. As it turns out, Pam was also on her way to work when her engine had sputtered to a stop. To say Joseph knew nothing about cars was a colossal understatement, but he was keen on impressing the pretty woman by at least pretending to be of help, so he asked her to pop the hood. A serial bachelor, Joseph had realized long ago the world’s smallest handcuff would never find its way on his left hand, but a beautiful woman could get him to do just about anything. The engine was a Rube Goldberg machine of metal and wire and the only thing he recognized was the oil dip stick. In the midst of his confusion on where to even begin, his hands started to move on their own and instantly the objects under the hood became as familiar as his own face. After 5 minutes of working like a one-man pit crew at Indy, he asked Pam to start the car. She slid into the driver’s seat and placed the key in the ignition. As the key turned and the engine roared to life Joseph’s entire left leg went numb and he collapsed on the ground.
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