By Matthew “Scratch” De Reno
CoverUps Investigator
SEAFORD, Delaware — Ben Haseltine, a retired male nurse who worked nearly his whole life at Nanticoke Memorial Hospital, dealing with strokes of a pulmonary nature, finally had one of good fortune last month. CoverUps has learned that he found a real, true-to-life “Key to Success.”
“I really couldn’t believe it,” said Heseltine, 68, a self-styled “Jona” who spent the better part of his last unremarkable forty years of life without anything even resembling a “pin of modest achievement,” let alone a “Key to Success.”
“I really wish I had this key when I was much younger. A lot of good it will do me now,” he joked. “Maybe I’ll finally figure out my putting problems on the green. Maybe I might finally beat my wife at Scrabble. It sure would’ve come in handy when I was in my 20s.”
Heseltine is a lifelong acquaintance of failure, which he plans to put behind him with his Key to Success: he flunked out of college five times; his idea for an early “Clapper” fell on deaf ears; his design for a “slip and slide” tanked when funding dried up. His proposal for a solar-powered airplane never flew with the banks. The list (and the puns) goes on and on.
But now hapless Ben feels his bitter toil and born-loserdom are behind him for good. It’s just that he’s not sure what to do with his Key to Success.
“I guess it’s my duty as a patriotic American to share my ‘Key To Success’ with the Bush Administration,” Heseltine said. “But, I’m not sure they would know what to do with it either. More likely they’d take it and open up a ‘Pandora’s Box’.”
Speaking of which, Heseltine will be the first to tell you, there was a bit of luck involved in finding the Key To Success. As fate would have it, he almost opened up Pandora’s Box, which was sitting beneath the key to success.
He said it looked like just any box.
“It was just luck that I didn’t open it,” said Ben. “Instead I opted to buy the Key to Success. Who’da thunk?”
Years ago Ben had a chance to grab the Brass Ring, but he never did.
“I wasn’t about to let something like that happen again,” he said, patting his pockets. “Now, where did I put it?”