Sunday Story- Presage

Presage- an omen; a sign that something bad will happen

Ex: They took it as a presage that the first bird of paradise that they saw on their hike throughout the Costa Rican rainforest flew full speed into a Guanacaste tree and died upon impact. Sure enough, the rest of the trip was a waking nightmare. Dehydrated and confused, having forgot to pack enough water, they thought to themselves “You must be shitting me” as they stumbled out of the thick brush only to find that their one means of traversing the gorge was one of those rickety, wood-plank bridges with panels missing that looked like something straight out of The Temple of Doom. They inched slowly across the bridge, gripping tightly to the ropes that served as flimsy handrails. They were about halfway across when, with a loud CRACK, one of the wood pieces split open, and they both began to freefall towards the dark forest canopy below. Their lives flashed before their eyes. This was it, they thought. Death was imminent. However, when they made impact, it was not with the hard wood of the treetops, but with the tender, soft embrace of a small Asian man. Suddenly realizing that they were not, in fact, laying flattened and lifeless at the bottom of the jungle, they looked up in awe at their savior. “Ke Huy Quan!?” They exclaimed in disbelief. “The Ke Huy Quan who rose to fame as a child actor playing the character Short Round in Temple of Doom? The same Ke Huy Quan who, years later, would inspire a generation with his return to dramatic acting, winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Waymond Wang in Everything Everywhere All At Once? That Ke Huy Quan!?” Quan’s miraculous comeback story now also included his heroic saving of an innocent couple in the rainforests of Costa Rica. How could you not love the guy?