The Mingle Escape Rocket – en saga i brevform

Dear George,

Please forgive me for not keeping in touch more frequently. You are my brother, and I love you. Wow, that was so much easier to write than to say. And now I obviously wonder about the difference between reading and hearing it. Perhaps you can tell me sometime.

I’m writing to you because of quite an unusual experience. Let’s take it from the beginning. You know how, even more than before, I turned into a loner after Dad passed away. It became the new me and a lifestyle that, in kind of a reversed way, set me free. I stopped struggling with liking people – and being liked. Instead, I turned to my hobbies and working with my hands and with the creative mind I know we share. You are a talented engineer, I know, and I have realized I have that gift too, even though I have neither a diploma nor a career. I’m not sure if you know, but a couple of my jobs rendered decent earnings, and financially, I’m totally alright.

Getting to the point. Some time ago, against all odds, I received an invitation to a summer wedding. I had almost literally saved the groom's life after a car crash, and as a token of his gratitude, the couple invited me. I had zero intention of participating, but the stubborn groom, with whom I am a neighbor, just wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Heck, I don’t care if you hover over the reception on a rocket, but I won’t take no for an answer,” were his exact words.

Perhaps you are kind of guessing where this is going. Without deciding whether or not I would go, I started drawing on a backpack escape jet engine, primarily for risky safety and war operations. And you know how it is. I just couldn’t stop myself, and a few weeks later, I ran the first tests, flying a 165-pound wooden and metal man some 200 feet up in the air out by the deserted factory area. As the jet engine exhausted, a pneumatic air tank, charged by the rocket, opened to expand the parachute in tenths of a second. Already on the first try, the timing was almost perfect, and the parachute deployed rapidly at that brief moment when the rocket man was standing still in midair before starting to fall. I was thrilled and couldn’t sleep for like two days before I turned the papers in at the patent office.

Only a disturbingly odd man would wear such spectacular equipment to a summer wedding. I know.

The neighbor and groom is an extraordinarily good person, that one must say. Religious, obviously. I must have looked like a lunatic space nerd showing up in a rented white tuxedo with the emergency jetpack strapped to my back. Jack, as it is, patted me on the back (on the rocket) and, in an overwhelmingly kind way, explained how happy he was for my participation and that he just loved the way I handled my social condition.

All in all, it turned out really well, and I actually had a nice time, having also more than a couple of glasses of champagne in the warm summer evening. I chit-chatted like I can’t remember when and almost totally forgot about “my social condition”. It all came along nicely until just after midnight when I accidentally touched the escape button as I was demonstrating my golf swing to an Irish uncle of the bride. The rocket went off immediately, and in half a second, all blood went to my feet. When I came back to consciousness only seconds later, I was dangling away under the yellow parachute at least 250 feet above the garden. A gentle summer breeze carried me away from the party, and as I gazed out over the valley and the acres, I couldn't help but think that human company can really lift your spirit.

So, inspired by that event, I’m now writing this letter to keep in touch. Perhaps after this, I will reach out more often. Or at least this once, which is better than nothing.

Take care. I hope you are well and that you are still coming up with great ideas and innovations the way you used to.

Best regards,

Harry