A story about a hero

      The world is a cold and depressing place, I'm pretty sure we can all agree with that. But! On a note of positivity and warmth, the first trailer for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story dropped today, and it is a beautiful thing. There are AT-ATs on a tropical beach! Space Samurais taking down Storm Troopers! Sassy banter! Blaster fire! Death Star! Mon Mothma! Hints at Darth Vader! A mysterious new Imperial villain who has a badass cape! Literally everything you could want in a movie, except Chris Pratt.
       Seriously though, if you like Star Wars, go watch the trailer right now.
       Okay, that's out of the way, and I still have space to fill. I don't have a plan for this... Um. The weather sucks, eh? Snow in April. Good joke, Mother Nature, good joke. I'm thinking about having nachos for supper? That's not interesting at all...
      Okay, okay. I get it. It's going to have to be a story time blog. Fine. Here's a short story for you:

His name was George. An ordinary man, nothing remarkable, or special, or remarkably special. Just an ordinary bloke. He grew up simply, in a small town, attended an ordinary school and did ordinary things. If there was a single remarkable thing about George it was how bloody unremarkable he was.

                George was a postman. Now, a postman is an archaic position held over from the medieval times, before email, and Amazon air strikes. The postman wanders around the wilderness delivering parcels to destitute farmers, and the unfortunates with poor bandwidth. George enjoyed his job; it got him out of the house—not that there was anything to get away from. He enjoyed his walks up the long drives and down the same long drives and then up the next drive and down that drive again. His life was repetitive and unsurprising, just the way he liked it.

                Mary on the other hand, had a fantastically surprising life. Perhaps fantastically is a poor word. Tragically or upsetting would fit better. As a young child her parents had divorced and she was dragged off to the country by her father. At her first day of school she fell out of the desk three times. In a row. It was a sad foreshadowing of the rest of her school career. Her father passed away soon after she graduated leaving her to take care of the farm. Her first year as a farmer made the news. But not in a good way. Her barn turned down. While she was watering her vegetable garden. Events like that always happened to her. She had the least stable life she could think of. And she was starting to regret all of the things that led her to this.

                George had always fancied this one girl during school. But he couldn’t talk to her; that would be something new, something different. So he lived his life. His dull, dull life. She still lived in the area, he delivered her post everyday but he never saw her. She was constantly receiving packages. George assumed that she was simply growing bored of the whole country life—something that he could not understand. Why anyone would ever want to leave and go to the city was beyond him; the country had everything! The quiet, the emptiness, the lack of people. Who could possibly want more than that?

                It was a cheery May afternoon and George was delivering an unusual amount of parcels when he noticed something amiss. There was no package for Mary (I truly hope you, the reader, had figured out that Mary was the girl by now)! No post for her at all! The first time in five years that Mary had no post. George was slightly confused by this change to his routine, and that confusion led to worry when she had no post the next day as well. On the third day George decided to investigate. A first for him; an almost spontaneous decision, only two sleepless nights of thinking and overthinking and calling his padre at two in the morning. The padre was compassionate the first night, on the second night he told George to grow a pair and be a man. George took this to heart.

                She had a shorter drive than most but it seemed to take an eon to walk it. He finally reached her door, drenched in sweat, reeking of fear. His hand wavered over the door for five minutes before he finally knocked.

                The door opened a few moments later revealing an average looking woman in average looking clothes looking very haggard. “Yes, what is it?” She asked, obviously stressed.

                “Uh, hi, yes, umm,” George stammered out. “I’m, uh, George. The post man. I, hmm, noticed that you haven’t received anything in a, uh, um, while. I was slightly concerned.” He smiled awkwardly at the end. As awkward as a meeting between Obama and anyone from the South.

                “Um…thanks? I guess. No, no, my internets been down the past while. One of the cows knocked over the satellite and I haven’t fixed that yet.” Mary looked at the strange man closely. “Are you…are you George?”

                George brightened up, “Yes, yeah I am. Do you want me to check that satellite for you?”

                Mary smiled, “You would be my hero! Do you want to grab some tea first?”

                And that is how George became a hero to the one person who really mattered, and how he learned to live, just a little.