We all get an odd assortment of presents during the holiday season... some we like (DVD, new shirt, jewelry) and some we wonder about (belt, bathrobe, thesaurus)-- but no gift received anywhere was as strange as one present I'll never forget.
I was living in NH and working weekend mornings at a radio station... I often worked at another job Friday nights; so I would drive right over and take a nap on the station couch for a few hours. There was always a board operator for the AM (news-talk-sports) and a DJ on the FM (classic rock) in the building... and before I settled in for a quick nap I chatted with the AM board-op.
This man was not all there. He regularly wore yellow pants and a black baseball cap with no logo whatsoever while bringing his gun and porn collection to work. Jack had a voice that would inexplicably rise an octave during normal conversation. He drove his trans-am once a year because he wanted to keep it clean. He engaged in an affair with a truck driver's wife and married a woman half his age-- when he was 32 (it's one thing to have parental permission, another for it to be state-mandated). Jack O'Brien (his air-name at the time) was capable of anything.
That night he asked me if I liked Snickers bars... and who doesn't? I said I did and he told me there were some in the FM studio with Sean (the FM DJ-- who was quite a bit more sane than Jack). Simple enough.
Sean handed me a huge ziploc bag filled with wrapperless candy bars... and that's when things became surreal. I asked what the deal was and he told me "Jack will fill you in"... did he ever. He told me that although he didn't like Snickers bars he wanted to collect the wrappers. Was there some contest where he received a hat for sending in proofs of purchase? Was he on a mission to find a golden ticket?
Jack showed me a photo album... but inside there were white pictures of Christmas scenes. He explained "there's this girl at work I have a crush on... she likes Snickers bars and I'm making her a Christmas Card with the wrappers". Okay, things can't get any stranger, can they?
I looked at the pictures. Santa instead of sliding down a chimney was sliding down a Snickers bar. Santa instead of riding a sleigh--riding a snickers bar. Instead of the usual holiday greetings, the captions were "Merry SNICKERS" and "Have a SNICKERS New Year".
This would have been enough, but he felt the need to explain every page...: "Don't you get it, Dave?--Santa's sliding down a SNICKERS bar!"..."Look- it's a SNICKERS tree!" (nothing sounds stranger than a high-pitched "SNICKERS"...
He gave her the card. It didn't have the desired effect as she got engaged to another man within the month (no word whether or not he was a truck driver)... and the legend of Merry Snickers lives on.
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