Notable, and Not Entirely Unpleasant

A seven-year-old insult comic from Australia was featured on America’s Got Talent last night.  He trashed the four judges.  I must admit, being insulted by a kid with an Australian accent is appealing in a weird way.

The uniqueness of that reminded me of the time I changed-out the failing ballast for a fluorescent light inside the cash vault at the Federal Reserve.

The cash vault is serious business.  You have to check-in directly with the main guard station and then you are escorted through a series of locked doors by an armed guard.  Cameras are trained on you at all times.  The guard must never let anyone working there out of sight.

The guards at the Federal Reserve are not your candy-eating, comic book-reading variety; they take their work seriously.  They practice marksmanship in their own private shooting range on a regular basis.  After being escorted inside the vault (my handtools and pouch carried in my arms) the guard pointed out a light up on the concrete ceiling that needed a ballast replacement.  “I’m going to have to have to go out and get a ladder to reach that,” I remarked, thinking about the hassle of dragging a ladder back and forth through all of the security doors.

The guard pointed at a pallet stacked about five-foot-tall and wrapped tightly with dark paper.  I could not tell what was under the wrapping.  “You can reach it if you stand on that,” he suggested.

“I think so.”

Using a pallet jack enclosed within the vault, we jockeyed the pallet in place under the light.  I belted on my tools, climbed onto the stack on the pallet, and tore into the fixture.  Having nothing better to do, the guard watched me with a fair level of interest as I removed the ballast compartment cover and snipped at the nest of wires inside.  I know the guard’s brother a little, so we talked about him as I worked.

“Guess what?” the guard said as I handed the old ballast down to him.

“What?”

“You are standing on eleven-million dollars.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

Obviously, I have not forgotten that experience.

In my mind, standing atop an eleven-million dollar “ladder” to replace a twenty-dollar ballast is the same is being insulted by a kid with an Australian accent.

Notable, and not entirely unpleasant.

Final note: The kid did not earn the golden buzzer.

—Mitchell Hegman