My wife was sitting down to a late lunch when she had a close encounter with the zeitgeist, overhearing two restaurant employees having a light-hearted discussion about work.

 

“Don’t make me go JetBlue on you,” one of them said.

 

 So now it’s official, the reference point for a social movement, a catchphrase hatched from one isolated moment on an airplane that captured the feelings of millions of frustrated American workers.

 

“Going JetBlue” is the new “going postal” – without the dark images and, you know, massacres and a bad name given to thousands of good people who ensure that we get our mail without causing bloodshed in the process.

 

And we have a new American folk hero in Steven Slater, the flight attendant who lost his cool and his job on Aug. 9, used some bad words, grabbed some beer, and exited the plane on his backside but landed on his feet, considering the reality show offers that began arriving, I imagine, before he made it home.

 

So what do we think?  Is Slater, in fact, a folk hero?  Was this the first recorded incident of going JetBlue, a theatrical rude gesture to the contemporary working world, the tipping point for millions of Americans who work longer hours for less purchasing power and even less respect?

 

Yeah.  I don’t think so either.

 

I think this is what it is, a quirky story for a cranky country in a summer that probably isn’t going to inspire scrapbooking.  

 

There have been bright spots but mostly not; mostly it’s been bad news and then some, from a perpetual oil leak to a missed baseball call to Lebron James leaving Cleveland without the good manners to turn the lights off as he left.  

 

There’s flooding and devastation in Pakistan that can’t be described without flipping backwards in the Bible.  

 

Slater added to an unemployment roll that’s been hanging around 10 percent for a while now and shows no signs of life.  And Newt Gingrich is EVERYWHERE.

 

So I understand the yearning for a folk hero, the little guy who pushes back against the power structure, speaks for the rest of us, does what we want to do but can’t, or won’t.  

 

The problem, of course, is that for every Davy Crockett and Johnny Appleseed, there’s also a Billy the Kid and Bonnie and Clyde, inspiring us in the worst possible way.

 

Maybe what we need is a folk singer, instead.  Somebody call Pete Seeger.

 

I had a different idea, actually.  I thought maybe we could shift the narrative a bit, get away from those who capture the public’s attention by bad behavior or at best by acting out in questionable if understandable ways.  

 

If this is going to be partly the summer of Steven Slater, maybe we can find an alternative story that doesn’t play to our frustrations but instead our imaginations.  Let me do some research and I’ll get back to you.

 

Wait.  Found one.  

 

It’s a small enough story in a very big pond that it’s likely if you do a search for it in a couple of weeks, you’ll come up with this column (welcome, searchers).  But small stories leave interesting splashes, sometimes, and this one splashed for me.

 

James King is slightly older than I, 55, and a Connecticut resident working in corporate communications, a family man who paid his bills, did his job, raised his kids, and got up early in the morning for a particular reason.

 

According to Melinda Henneberger, who wrote about him at PoliticsDaily.com, at the age of 6, James King decided he was going to be a novelist.  

 

And he did, although he worked for a living writing newsletters and his four novels were, to be technical about it, unpublished.  His most recent, “Bill Warrington’s Last Chance,” was rejected by 54 book agents.

 

And still he wrote, before work, before dawn sometimes.  And dreamed, I’m guessing.

 

Last year King’s book won the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, coming out on top over 6,500 submissions, and on Aug. 9, the very same day Steven Slater placed his butt on that evacuation chute and grabbed his 15 minutes, “Bill Warrington’s Last Chance” was published by Viking.

 

You don’t need me to tell you life isn’t fair, that good intentions pave rocky roads, that talent is fine and fun but it ensures nothing, sometimes, but heartbreak. 

 

There are names we will never know, better singers than Susan Boyle, better actors than Tom Cruise, better Adams than Adam Sandler.

 

I bought James King’s book today, not as a fiction reader but as a big fan of dreams, and of writers.  I wish Slater well. I understand frustration, and I appreciate the romance of lost causes; this summer, though, I seem to be more interested in last chances, and what happens when they end up finishing in first place.