"Would You Like to King Size Your Humiliation Today?"
(or "You Want Me to Do WHAT for $4.25 an Hour?")


Someday when they make a movie of my life, this can go in the section on my early years...

“Hey Pat... How would you like to work outside today?”

“Sure, sounds great.”

It was a beautiful 75-degree day in May. I was 16 years old and earning just enough money at Burger King to pay for my car (which, of course, I needed so I could get to work). Anything sounded better than an afternoon standing over the fryolator.

“OK... Go back to the stock room and put this on.”

It was Gloria. One of the managers. She handed me a white plastic shopping bag.

I looked in the bag, and then I looked at her. I thought I was one of her favorites...

“Are you serious?”

“Yup. Put it on and go stand out front and wave to the people driving by. And I want to see some enthusiasm. Now get going.”

Her tone made me realize that I shouldn’t ask again. I sulked away to the back room to put on the contents of the bag.

So much for the beautiful day. Fifteen pounds of foam and fur made the late afternoon sun unbearable. I stood under the Burger King sign on the sidewalk to get a little shade.

I tried my best to have fun with the situation. It was my lot in life to spend that afternoon dressed up as a gorilla. A pink gorilla. I was long past trying to maintain any sense of dignity. However, when you’re 16 years old, it’s really tough to take the “in 100 years, no one is going to care anyway” approach to life. And I wasn’t really thrilled with my career in fast food to begin with.

At least no one could tell it was me in there. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad way to spend the afternoon.

And then a car pulled up and stopped right next to me. Maybe they needed directions... But would you stop and ask directions from a guy in a pink gorilla suit?

“Pat? Is that you?!”

My heart sank. Mild panic started to set in. How could anyone have possibly recognized me? I turned and looked at the person in the truck pulled up next to me.

Oh crap. It was Heather’s mom. What the hell was she doing here?

Heather was a girl that I had had a crush on as a pre-teen. Our families were friends. We had been to Old Orchard Beach together in the summers a few times. I vividly remember a black one-piece bathing suit that she used to wear... I was 10. She was 9. It was all very innocent.

And now her mother was here for my finest hour (I could hear her saying in my head “I told you that boy wasn’t going anywhere...”). At least Heather wasn’t in the car with her mom.

I tried to shake my head no. Definitely not Pat in here.

The more I protested, the more she insisted that it was me. How she recognized me, I’ll never know (maybe I wasn’t really selling myself as a pink gorilla... If I had just been more gorilla-like from the beginning, I may have never been detected).

My parents were definitely going to hear about this now that Heather’s mom knew (and I don’t come from one of those families where a humiliating event gets ignored and never discussed again).

Heather’s mom eventually moved on. And I still had a few hours to kill before my break. I waved to all the cars as they went by. And it did lift my spirits a bit when somebody driving by gave me a beep from their horn (to this day, I still beep and wave to every poor teenager I see in a ridiculous costume out in front of a store).

That was the day I decided I needed to go to college. There had to be something better out there for this pink gorilla.