**This story is 100% true**
I read the next name from the list, “J.W.?”
“Yeah, hey, how’s it going?”
“It’s going well. Thank you for asking. What can I do for you?”
“I can’t make any, um, calls on my cell phone.”
“Okay, let me take a look at it.”
I grab the phone from the tanned hand of the man with spiky, slightly thinned, brown hair. The phone should have at least half a bar of service in our store and should read the Company’s name across the top of the screen. Instead, it has stopped even trying to search for reception and needs a little help. If ever there were a panacea for cell phone woes, it’s the old pull-out-the-battery-put-it-back routine. I try that while I get the phone number from the gentleman in the shiny black shirt. The 702 area code suggests he is visiting from Vegas and as I type it in to the computer, I can’t help but recognize his name. John W. Bobbitt. Holy Shit.
I was 15 when John Wayne Bobbitt and his then wife, Lorena, splashed their way onto the main stage of national news. He was accused/acquitted of marital abuse and she was found not guilty of taking a knife to his penis and throwing it into a field. There were, rightly, no riots following this verdict.
And here I was, face to face with tabloid celebrity. Not celebrity, legend! I was sharing space with the star of movies such as John Wayne Bobbitt: Uncut and the terrifying Frankenpenis. That's right, one of the founding, ahem, members of the largely unknown band, The Severed Parts was handing me his cell phone! (You know I had to look up all this stuff, right?)
Famously, in 1993 an all-out scouring of the field in Manassas, Virginia resulted in locating the half penis and, like many a Disney movie, it was quickly put on ice. It was ultimately taken to the hospital where Mr. Bobbitt was being treated and a nearly 10 hour surgery resulted in the reunion of Big John and Little John.
There are moments in one's life when one discovers his true calling. There are times of serendipity that can neither be explained nor denied. There is magic. 15 years after this man made my adolescent manhood shrivel in empathy, I am performing surgery on his cellular phone. Granted, I am performing a far simpler operation in the back room of the Company phone store, but an operation nonetheless. I deftly reprogram the razor-thin flip phone with a new smart chip and, making sure the phone is able to make outgoing calls, I reappear to the sales floor, wiping my hands and wiping down the phone. It is now that destiny calls out to me as I hand the gentleman his phone and deliver the line that has been screaming to get outside my head.
“Congratulations, Mr. Bobbitt. You’re reconnected.”
