Paper Balls and Poor Decisions

Daily writing prompt

What’s a moment in your life that felt like it was straight out of a movie?

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Most of my “straight out of a movie” moments seem to happen at work. Some people collect travel stories. I collect tales from the production floor.

Back when I was a contractor, a few of my coworkers suffered from a severe condition known as too much free time. One particularly slow day, they began crafting paper airplanes and paper balls from whatever scraps they could find. Apparently, adulthood is a flexible concept.

At the time, I was still fairly shy and focused on keeping up with my deliveries, so I ignored the growing paper-based arms race happening around me. Once I finally caught up, I returned to my station, checked the monitor for my next assignment, and started reviewing my marching orders.

That’s when the movie moment happened.

According to my team leader, a paper ball came sailing across the department on a direct collision course with my head. I never saw it. Never heard it. Never even knew it existed.

Yet somehow, while staring at the screen, I casually shifted just enough for the projectile to whistle past me harmlessly and then moved back into place.

No dramatic music. No slow-motion replay. No heroic pose.

Just pure luck and, apparently, excellent survival instincts.

My leader stared at me and asked if I had seen it coming.

I hadn’t.

From that day forward, several coworkers and my leader started calling me “Ninja.”

To this day, I maintain that I possess no special reflexes. However, if office supplies ever launch a coordinated attack, I appear to have a fighting chance.