When I was a kid (many, many years ago!) my favorite TV show was “The Six Million Dollar Man” staring Lee Majors as “Steve Austin”. The premise of the show was pretty simple: Poor little Stevie was a test pilot and was critically injured in a horrendous plane crash when he was trying out some fancy new US government hardware built by the lowest bidder. For reasons unknown (perhaps he didn’t have any health insurance?) the government decided to step up and pay the bill for his fancy re-constructive surgery. It wasn’t cheap either. 6 million bucks! Back then, that was some serious cash. Today for 6 mill you can’t even get a decent kidney transplant let alone a super duper bionic leg, arm and an eye to boot! Anyway, I digress.
The part of this story line that I never really questioned when I was little was this: After the surgery the US government basically owned this guy.
“Do what we want Steve or we will take it all back. You’ll be an armless, legless one eyed dude selling pencils somewhere”. Imagine what it would feel like to owe your boss 6 million bucks?
“Dave, you’re one air from 6am to midnight this week…oh yeah, you’re working this weekend too”…
”But I haven’t had a day off in 3 years Larry”.
“The leg Dave. We can take it back. You don’t believe me? Look, I have a screwdriver right here”.
Personally if I was Steve Austin I would have waited till the government paid all the bills and send me to re-hab…then I would have quit.
"See ya’ guys. Thanks for the body parts. I’m moving to Canada. In fact, I think I’ll run there." Doo Doo Doo Doo (insert bionic sfx)