Better Than A Space Delivery Boy

This was several years back, after the Mars rover Curiosity successfully landed on the planet, the first Mars rover that could dig up soil samples for chemical analysis. There was excitement about it all over the news.

My sister, parents, and I were out having lunch with our parents’ friends, a very extroverted couple who love to travel and meet lots of people. The conversation turns to the Mars rover.

Friend #1: “You know, we know one of the engineers working on that project! He’s one of the guys in charge of getting the soil samples with the rover.”

Friend #2: “Oh, they were all ecstatic over there when it landed.”

Friend #1: “They were! And you know what? This guy is so brilliant — he works for NASA, after all! — but when he told his dad that he wanted to study engineering back when he was in college, his dad said he’d never be anything but a ditch digger! Can you believe that?”

Sister: *Pauses* “Well… his dad was right. He is a ditch digger. On Mars.”

Everyone froze for a second and then burst out laughing. The friends agreed she was right and that they had to tell the guy what she said the next time they talked to him. We never heard back about a reaction, but I sincerely hope he got to go home and gloat to his dad about landing the best ditch-digging job in the solar system.

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