The Rubber Chicken Chronicles

In my last blog I explained that my college roommates and I were frequent recipients of an award of dubious distinction from a campus organization to which we all belonged. The “Rubber Chicken Award” was given in good natured jest to the person or persons who had done something silly, foolish and most particularly embarrassing during the previous week. The nominations came from fellow members who were witnesses to whatever hapless mortification may have befallen one of us. Needless to say, these nominations came after the conclusion of all regular business and thus never appeared in any official organizational minutes of the meetings. There are laws against blackmail.

One minor example of how one wins the “Rubber Chicken” award, which by the way, was actually a rubber chicken like the one Clay holds in the Spamalot promotional photograph, is the incident that happened on a public street to one of my roommates. The poor girl was innocently walking down the street with an armload of books in a hurry to get to her next class. It was called to her attention that her shoelace was untied and that she was in danger of tripping. She was in a hurry and not thinking about anything except getting to class. She set her large pile of books down on the hood of a parked car next to the curb. As she was bending down to tie her shoe, she couldn’t help but notice the surprised looks on the faces of the couple who suddenly popped up in the back seat. You get the picture. Of course that was a minor event compared to one of our more typical, prize winning…uh…adventures.

Where do I begin? First, I need to explain about “Malibu Ken”. In the town house apartment next to ours, there lived four young men who were also students at our venerable institution of higher learning. One of them we called “Malibu Ken”, like the particular version of the plastic boyfriend of Mattell’s Barbie Doll. He was gorgeous! He was tall blonde and tan year round owing to the fact that he was a male model. I once, as a joke, sent him an anonymous Valentine card. He actually thought it was from the girl who appeared on the card in a soft, romantic photograph of a young couple. He thought she looked familiar and that he might have worked with her before. It’s the story of my life. I send a gorgeous guy a secret Valentine and he thinks it is from a beautiful young model and not the girl next door. But I digress.

Our neighbors were actually nice guys and we often interacted in a friendly and teasing manner as might be expected from neighbors in college town apartment hijinks. One day after a generous snow fall we decided to surprise “Malibu Ken”. With the help of his roommate, we waited inside of HIS apartment as if we had just dropped by for a friendly visit. As he approached the sliding patio door from the parking lot, we opened fire in a hail of snowballs!! Immediately, we ran out the front door of the apartment on the other side of the building and dashed into our own front door. We locked it down tight and waited for his reprisal!

We waited for about 20 minutes or so and nothing happened until there was a ring of our front doorbell. There was a female voice on the other side of the locked door. She said: “It’s the Avon Lady. I have your order.” Yeah, right! We weren’t born yesterday. One of my roommates, with her ear to the door, was reasonably sure the vaguely familiar voice belonged to a friend of Mailbu Ken’s. There was no WAY we would fall for that one! We knew that as soon we opened the door we would be deluged with rapid fire snowballs or worse!!! We bantered with the fool on the other side of the door who thought she could outsmart US. I should tell you that one of my roommates is Vice President of marketing for a major U.S. corporation. Two of them have had successful careers in important positions for two different states. These were no dummies!! She might as well have said: “Landshark!” We would have none of it. She said something like: “If you’d just open your door I could drop off your order!” I think my ingenious reply was: “Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin!” We laughed as the would-be “accomplice” left in frustration. We giggled about what might still be in store for us because we just didn’t think the fella’s would give up so easily. We didn’t have to wait long.

Retribution came swiftly but not how you might think. It was delivered by one of our other roommates who came home a little later and had not been involved in the snowball war. You see, she reminded us in that annoying little voice of reason that we actually HAD ordered a few things from Avon some weeks earlier. Can you imagine? After some embarrassing phone calls and apologetic groveling later, we did finally receive our merchandise from a less than amused Avon Lady. We also received our comeuppance for our little ambush. The revenge you visit upon yourself is as difficult to swallow as, well, rubber chicken. The neighbors had a good laugh at our expense and figured we were even.

Now, perhaps you can understand why the rubber chicken spent so much time in our apartment. With four of us as members of the same organization, there was always a witness! Were there more such adventures? Oh, I am sure there were but I am not sure I can tell them here! Besides, it was a long time ago and my memory is fading. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I did take away one lesson from all of this. Helen Keller would have been a GREAT roommate.

Today's original entry:

UPDATE to original entry for today which appears below: LISA1068 is a genius Thanks Lisa for telling me how to fix this problem it worked!!!

The solution was simple. I switched to Mozilla Firefox browser and logged in. I could see everything I lost!! I removed the picture that I added and logged in again with my regular browser. ALL IS WELL. If any of you are having weird technical problems, try logging in with Mozilla's FireFox and see what happens. Good to know. I had downloaded that browser recently for something else. It is VERY easy and quick to do. Some say it really helps in various technical areas. Her solution is posted at the MB for anyone who is interested.

original entry I went to add a new background pic to my blog and lost all my buttons to edit and view comments or previous blogs. They are all gone!!!!! I have submitted a ticket! What happened?!!!

eta: I was going to add a funny story about the Rubber Chicken Chronicles but I guess NOT. I will not add further entries until this problem is resolved.