Now for something new and different from me: the beginning of a fiction story that aims to reach more people than I could reach through writing a serious nonfiction treatise on customer service. (See my Common Core post about how fiction works can also teach . . .) And now after way too much ado, here’s Delta!
(c) 2013 Trina Lambert
Plot armor, plot armor—the kid was always going on about plot armor. Well, they never talked about plot armor at her college. But once she figured out what it was, she knew she wanted it for Her Own Story. Who wouldn’t want a device that kept your character from dying—or—in her case—wimping out—when it was most inconvenient?
So in her dream, first of all she thought she was going to burn up. She was hot, really hot, and not in the way her husband wanted her to be. When that voice said, “Delta, Delta, you need to put on your plot armor—and don’t forget the boots either,” she looked up and saw a light beaming onto her. No wonder she was so hot, right? Still, the voice wouldn’t stop. Could this plot armor be a sort of deus ex machina that would finally help her get that damn dryer to work? (OK, it was a dream—it made sense that armor would make all the difference.)
However, Delta thought putting on armor when you’re so gosh-darned hot seemed like a good way to roast. But that deep voice kept nagging her to put on the armor. Perhaps she needed to suspend belief in order for the plot armor to work for her?
Frankly, she put it on to shut up the voice—like she needed something else telling her something needed to be done.
And, suddenly she heard a choir—her church choir of course—singing a ditty from a little-known composer by the name of Handel. Wow, and they’d even hired the union musicians for the orchestra. But, even more than that, the armor molded her body into more than it was, better than it had been even—and unlike with wearing Spanx, she didn’t feel like various parts of her were going to explode from the force.
“Delta,” the voice called again.
As she looked for the voice, a full-length mirror appeared—not gilded, of course, because that would be so much harder to dust—if she ever dusted, of course. She peeked in and realized that though she looked hot, she no longer felt hot. That armor had some miraculous microfibers working in its favor, as well as some powerful Spandex or something of the nature. She was good, really good, herself only combining much of her former youthful beauty with the wisdom (and crows’ feet) she’d gained over the years.
Oh, wait. Maybe she was dead.
Then she got mad. What if she’d wasted the best minutes/hours/days of her life wading through all of those labyrinthine-like phone trees trying to talk to a real human who actually used common sense and who had been empowered by the powers-that-be to help customers? Yet instead time and time again she found a cultural-wide commitment to non-service of customers. Was her last day going to have been spent trying to get somebody, anybody to care that her brand new dryer didn’t work—and they didn’t think it was a problem they couldn’t get the parts until the end of the month?
Guess not—there went the alarm clock she’d gotten when she left for college. That thing was so old she was going to have to kill it in order justify getting something newer.
She could feel that gone was her beautiful armor, but her cotton pajamas were drenched and likely sticking to her in a most unattractive way.
“Steve?” she called to her husband who was rustling in the closet to find something to wear to work. “Why is it so hot in here?”
“Hot? Before the sun’s up in January? When have you ever been too hot sleeping in the winter, She of Iceberg Feet?”
“Huh—that’s a good question. I must have been running a marathon—somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere of course—in my dreams. Ugh, I’m going to need to strip this bed and wash the sheets.”
“Did the dryer parts come yet? It’s supposed to snow, you know. I don’t think it’s going to be such a good day for drying the sheets on the line.”
“Oh, then somebody’s going to need to take these to the Laundromat and it’s not going to be me.”
“You mean me?”
“No—you tried to fix that lemon they sold us. I meant the idiot who thinks it’s a good idea to run a company that sells new dryers that don’t work and thinks ordering dryer parts just-on-their-time (from that slow boat from China or wherever they come from) is good enough for customers. I have half a mind to knock on the door of that bozo’s inner sanctum and kick his or her butt all the way down to the Laundromat.”
That’s when Delta saw it—what was that armor-like thing hanging on the back of the chair? And, those boots? What woman wouldn’t want to put on those boots when she went to remind a certain CEO of how it felt to be walked all over?
A chill ran down her back. The heat was gone and she felt more than fine—Delta was finally going to make people understand just what her name meant.
Going the Distance 
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