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| photo by jo mclure |
Good grief! Couldn't you at least have set your sights on the manager? Why did you settle on the assistant, the flunkey? The manager made frequent and lengthy trips into the walk-in cooler every day, and still came out sweating like a menopausal mama in the middle of a heatwave. I don't think he had any money left after he finished sniffing his paycheck up his nostrils...
Valentine's Day was close at hand. The cogs in my head started to turn. I wanted to celebrate in a bright, red way...
I found an "adult novelty" store in the phone book (in those days, they weren't on every corner, next to the Starbucks) and headed down one Saturday. It was in an exceedily seedy part of town, almost under the highway overpass. (Hey, isn't that where all the drug deals go down and all the bodies get dumped, at least according to the television shows? I'm just sayin'...)
As soon as I walked in, the excuses started tumbling out. I wanted to make sure the guy at the cash register knew that I wasn't shopping for my own recreational purposes. (Yeah, I'm sure that's the first time he heard that. "It's not for me, it's for a friend." Sure. Whatever.)
"I-need-a-blow-up-dummy,-a-girl. A-life-sized-one."
"It's-not-for-me. REALLY!"
"It's-gonna-be-part-of-a-prank! I'm-serious!"
I'm sure the guy had heard so many hokey excuses, and I'm sure he couldn't care less. A cigarette dangling from his mouth, the ash dangerously long, he asked me some questions as he led me to the appropriate section of the shop.
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| photo by Neato Coolville |
"What color do you want her hair to be?" (Geeze! What do I care? But since I want the dummy to look like me, could I get her with dyed red hair, with big brown roots? No? Oh well...)
"Do you want her anatomically correct?" (Good grief! I don't even want to think about THAT option!)
I finally made my purchase--as quickly as possible--and rushed out. The rest of the joke was easy to arrange. I dressed her in a Denny's uniform, and wrapped her up in plain brown paper, making the "package" as rectangular as possible. My brother wore something that looked like a uniform and delivered it to my soon-t0-be guy.
Fortunately for me (unfortunately for him) he happened to be on "the line" (cooking) at the time that "Wanda the Waitress" was dropped off. Unfortunately for him, there was a cook right next to him when he opened the package. And unfortunately for him (but of course, another cherry on top for me), as soon as he unleashed what was inside the brown paper, her legs---that had been more or less bound together---sprang apart with a surprising force.
As I watched him from across the diningroom and enjoyed the shade his face had instantly taken on, I thought, 'Yes, red is the perfect color for Valentine's Day...
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| photo by katytheterrible |
My thoughtful gesture was not in vain. Thirty years later, we're still together. Thankfully, we were both able to escape from Denny's and we only had to chew off a couple of our feet to get away...
