Keriosity

A few weeks ago, I spent 2 days in Vegas, having a lovely time with friends. And then this happened:

We decided to stop by Haagen Daz in The Venetian hotel for a tasty afternoon treat, when I noticed a large plaster ice-cream cone statue - like Mr. Peanut, but an ice-cream cone. Anyway, it was holding coupons in its hand and without really thinking about it, I go up to take a coupon and of course, like an idiot, it doesn’t occur to me that it’s a person dressed up like an ice-cream cone and just as I reach for a coupon, he snatches his hand away and I jump about 4 feet. And then ALL of the 107 customers in Haagen Daz and the 3 employees, and the thousands of people walking by all start to laugh hysterically and point at me. I was not amused. Yet I played it off - haha, yes how funny. He sure got me! hardy har har.

Well the ice cream cone would not let it go. He followed me into the store and continued to harass me! I tried to have a polite sense of humor about it until I could swear that the little slit where his eyes must have been was pointed significantly south of my necklace, and then I had enough. When he handed me a third coupon, I grabbed onto his hand and insisted “No, really. You can stop now. In fact - seriously! Go. Away. NOW.” He slithered off to embarrass others.

I really hate those kinds of characters and I want to know: What parole board or prison-outreach program casts them? And then I want to know why these weirdos always pick me! Ok, in this case I walked right into it - but normally, they pick on me when I am innocently minding my own business. I’ve had a balloon-animal maker guy actually HIT me in the head with balloons during his little shtick - I guess trying to be funny or flirt with me or something. (My 2-year-old niece was glaring at him with daggers in her eyes. She’s a little protective of me.) I’ve had those living statue people reach out and touch me. I swear that Minnie Mouse was a little too friendly a few years ago outside those spinning teacups. And now I have this pervert rapist ice cream cone incident. Vegas, as you may know, is FULL of living statues, wax statues, plaster statues, all kinds of statues. I was a paranoid post-traumatic wreck for the rest of the trip! Even at a diner in the middle of the desert 190 miles out of Vegas, I kept one eye on my french toast and one eye on the Elvis statue next to me.

I think that these characters can be grouped in with Clowns as a category of weird scary beings who are obviously dangerous and should be avoided if at all possible.

I have met people who were Disney characters, and I don’t include those people in this category (even the lesbian Minnie Mouse, since lesbianism isn’t a form of depravity.) I consider the Disney character people to have a rather odd manifestation of masochism.

The “clown” category people are those who display a form of sadism in which they get off on forcing the shy public to interact with them by inflicting some form of extreme embarrassment - but all from behind the shield of a bizarre costume and a “happy” character. No emotionally healthy person who choose this job. Please - you know it’s true. There could be a whole group of laughing joyful fearless children, and who does the clown pick as his victim? The shy child who is clinging to her mom. We’ve all witnessed this. Ask 10 people on the street what they think of clowns and 8 will shudder. Try it!

No one likes these characters. Have you ever heard anyone say “Oh, look! A funny ice cream cone man! Oooo I hope he comes over to me!”? Never. Everyone reacts the same way: They mutter “oh sh*t, I hate those things.” Then they avoid eye-to-slit contact with the cone and try to leave the area as quickly as possible without attracting any attention. No one wants to play with the creepy ice cream cone.

It is my opinion that only a truly sadistic person with an extremely low self-esteem dresses up as a faceless object and tortures a person in an ice cream store for a good 5 minutes. And only a girl who REALLY wants $1 off her ice-cream purchase and simultaneously takes a leave of absense from her brain would naively reach for a coupon from such a perv. Next time I’ll kick him first and hope he drops all the coupons. Eh, screw the coupons. I’ll just kick him.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 5th, 2005 at 6:48 pm and is filed under Stuff I did, Stuff I think about, Stuff other people did. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.