Well, not teenaged, exactly. The photo on the left shows me--or a reasonable facsimile--at a grocery store in Cynthiana, Kentucky, circa 1983. That was me in the ten-gallon hat and the fuzzy felt costume that was like being rolled up in a rug with the Great Pyramid of Giza plopped down on my head.
I was supposed to be walking around the grocery store during its Grand Opening Celebration and spreading good cheer about Hostess Twinkies, but you try spreading good cheer with the Great Pyramid of Giza on your head. It hurt. And it was hot, too--hot enough to inspire me to spend a lot of time in the frozen foods section even though that's not where Twinkies generally congregate.
The aisles were wide in Frozen Foods but narrower elsewhere, which was a problem because that big Twinkie mask restricted my vision, a weakness exploited by the small boys who kept trying to trip me. They succeeded, finally, when I came around the corner into the meat aisle.
You think it's hard to spread good cheer while carrying the Great Pyramid of Giza on your head? Try spreading good cheer while watching your head roll down the aisle in the meat department.
But the pain, heat, and humiliation weren't the worst parts.
What could possibly be worse? I'll tell you what: on the way to the grocery store, I was the sole witness of a traffic accident that totalled three cars and a tow-truck. I somehow escaped so much as a scrape in the chaos, but I saw the bleeding truck driver pulled from his cab just before it burst into flames and I saw another driver's bloody hand reaching out the window, flailing about for help, finally grasping the radio antenna and breaking it in two with a thunderous snap. And as I walked around that grocery store wrapped in that ridiculous rug and wearing that ridiculous mask on my head, I could still see that bloody arm waving, still hear that driver's frantic screams.
But I was being paid to spread good cheer--not paid much, of course. What was minimum wage in 1983? Just enough to cover a week's groceries for a couple of struggling college students provided that we didn't splurge on Twinkies. I needed the money or I wouldn't have been there, and so I did my best: walking around the store sweating and in pain and with a mind roiling with bleeding, screaming car-crash victims, but through the pain I struggled to keep a great big happy smile on my face.
Stupid, of course. You've already spotted the flaw in my reasoning, but I didn't spot it until about halfway through my shift when I came around the corner into Frozen Foods and suddenly encountered my reflection: stretched across the front of that mask was the biggest, sappiest, happiest plastic smile ever manufactured.
It was a liberating sight. Inside my mask I could grimace and scowl, twist and mutter and even cry, but all anyone would ever see would be that big plastic Twinkie smile.
Did my stellar performance sell any Twinkies? I didn't keep tabs on the cash registers, but I know I made some small children cry and inspired a grizzled tobacco farmer to flash me a big toothless grin. Maybe if I'd tried a little harder to create warm feelings about Hostess Twinkies, the company would not now be facing dissolution.
But I did my best, and in the decades since that summer afternoon in Cynthiana, Kentucky, I've always kept a toy Twinkie nearby as a reminder of my venture into Twinkiedom and the valuable lessons it taught me: sometimes it's best to slap a plastic smile over the pain--but the longer it stays on, the more it hurts when you finally tear it off.
1 comment:
That's hilarious.
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