|
about me
name Tim C Hose sex male birthday 03.27.81
friends
Dan Tribble Mandy Kendra Katie
Portfolio Websites
Kendra Coggin Katie Cooper Daniel Green Amanda Burrow Brandi Jones Lisa Carter
Previous Posts
The Scourge of the Pond
Archives
12/01/2004 - 01/01/2005 01/01/2005 - 02/01/2005 05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005 06/01/2005 - 07/01/2005 08/01/2005 - 09/01/2005 09/01/2005 - 10/01/2005 10/01/2005 - 11/01/2005 12/01/2005 - 01/01/2006 01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006 02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006 03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006 04/01/2006 - 05/01/2006 09/01/2006 - 10/01/2006 12/01/2009 - 01/01/2010
Way Cool Websites
Vlad Studios Exploding Dog The Blue Letter Bible Woot Sales Zefrank Yanko Design |
Sunday, December 05, 2004
Hey, I only say things like that because they're true. Well, mostly true. I'm not THE Smokey Bear, that's my mom, but I'll get to all of that. This is just a record of a day I had a couple of years back. Thus it went, sirrah.
I'd been staying up reeeally late recently, either on the computer or driving, or running, whatever. I rarely had gotten to bed before three am that summer, which is okay, because my job didn't start until the evening. Waitering was fun! Anyways, as fun as waitering was, I love to have more cash on hand for college. To this point, I did this little odd job for my friend's dad. No, not lap dances, not donating blood or plasma, not even training rabid dogs. My job was nastier than any of those. I cleaned out those pits underneath the carwash, where all that... goo... that you people wash off of your car collects. Let me tell you, it's icky. Icky in the way that a garbage collector would turn his nose at. The thing is, though, it's darned good money. Evens out to about twenty dollars an hour, and I did two hours worth, so I didn't complain about the need for a shower. That started off my day, covered in stinky muck, at six thirty in the morning. No, I'm not a morning person, at least, not voulntarily. You can pay me to be one, though. After that, I went home and sand-blasted myself clean, napped for a few hours, and then I went to be Smokey. You see, my mother is the real Smokey Bear. My mother answers every single letter that any kid in America writes to Smokey Bear. Isn't that cool? For some reason, "they" chose this little podunk town in Arkansas to be the Smokey base camp. It's also my priveleage to say that I've begged her, and yes, she's going to let me write a letter. This has got me completely psyched out, for some reason. Well, since she works at the ranger station in town, she has me voulnteer for things she needs done, and since I have some spare time during the summer, I do it, and gladly. So she had me dress up in the Smokey Bear costume one day for the kids at this kind of mockup of a career day. It was flat awesome in some ways, terribly distressful in others. As a note, Smokey does not talk, ever, just so you can keep that in mind, when I tell you about what happened. It was bad in two different ways. First, the bad. The costume is hot. I had an ice pack strapped to me under it, but that didn't help my head, which cooked. So there I was, looking through the eyes and nose and mouth of this gigantic microwave oven that I had on my head while trying not to step on children. To hinder me further, sweat was pouring into my eyes, and then... my nose started to itch. People would come up and talk to Smokey, and there was one horrible scene I cound out about later from my brother, who watched it happen. It went like this. Man walks up grinning with his daughter in tow. The child looks a little bit apprehensive. "Hey Smokey!" Silence. No response from Smokey. The big bear just stands there, and the only motion it makes is that his head is shifting around slightly. "Hey... Smokey?" The child is now getting worried. Does Smokey not like her? Does he know that she played with her daddy's matches three weeks ago? Worry sets in. Why does his head keep shifting like that? "Ummm. Everything okay there big fella? Yeah well, it was nice seeing you... bye." The little girl is now white faced and close to crying. Never again will she touch matches. Never, she promises to herself! *INSIDE THE SMOKEY BEAR COSTUME* I'm frantic. My nose itches so badly now that I'm hunkering my head down and supporting the mask with my shoulders while I try to rake my nose across the inside of the head. I didn't even hear the man try to talk to me, I'm focused on balancing the head so that it doesn't topple off of my shoulders while at the same time, I'm tossing my head around inside the thing like a man possessed. Finally, I look up in time to see a frightened looking girl and her dad back away from me. Huh. I think. She must be scared of bears. So that was most of the bad part. The only other bad part was that I couldn't talk to tell anybody anything. It's a good thing that I used creative hand signals. On to the good part! I was so happy today, no matter how much my nosed itched. The kids loved me, for the most part. One kid in particular, I remembered. He looked to be about fourteen, which is too old to believe that Smokey is real, but he was also slightly retarded. Not so much, though. I think he was in public school, just slower, that's all. He'd hung around me for fifteen minutes, at a distance. I think he was deciding what to say. He finally came up to me kind of shyly and got up close. For all the shyness, though, he had this determined look in his eye that told me he was serious about something. "Smokey," he started, "I've been reading your comic, about how I shouldn't smoke. I don't smoke, it ment a bunch to me. I love you, Smokey." Ok, so I'm a big baby. That touched my heart, that's for sure. I wasn't supposed to talk, but when he hugged me with that smile on his face, I broke the rules and whispered, "I love you, too." None of the other kid's hugs ment as much as that one did. The rest of the day was a blur, and I rushed through work that night, just waiting until I could come home and write it down. TimChose [
8:58 PM ] |