Late Friday at work as I was trying to finish setting up to run invoices this week, we had a potential new client come in with his board of directors. One of the board members had his son with him and, once he saw my Spongebob calendar and Spongebob mouse pad, I was his new best friend. He came over asking to play with my stamps, my stapler, my notepad, but especially my iPod, Corduroy.
After asking me to play things by Soulja Boy and Chris Brown — neither of which I had — he got frustrated and asked to go through Corduroy to find something he liked. We then embarked on a battle of volume. He wanted to crank stuff from a couple of Spongebob albums I have and the scores to The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Normally, I would have said, “No, no, that’s not loud enough,” but there was a meeting going on 20 feet away from us. I would then have to constantly and quickly go for the volume button every time he cranked it all the while explaining why it was important we not interrupt what was going on in the conference room.
I should also tell you he would only listen to 30 seconds of each track. After that bored him, he then decided he would just ask me about certain tracks based on the cover art that was associated with it.
“Hey, I like her,” he said showing me this picture:
“Oh, yeah. She’s good. I just didn’t like that album much.” He replied with a noncommittal “Oh” and moved on. I had just learned something about him that came in incredibly handy when he got to the next picture.
“Hey, who’s this?”
“Uh, that’s Peaches,” I told him. “She’s okay.”
What? Was I supposed to be honest and say, “Holy sh*t! I LOVE her! Have you heard her song, “F*ck The Pain Away” where she sings, ‘Suckin’ on my titties like you wanted me’ and she has this other great song called “Stuff Me Up” where she tells everyone to eat a big cl*t or a big d*ck every day. Did you know she was an elementary school teacher before she started being a musical whore-slut-bitch? Ah, man, she’s awesome for her brutal sexual tactlessness.”
Instead I downplayed the entire thing and he immediately lost interest — another bullet dodged. A little while later, he’s now sitting in the chair in front of my desk (instead of right beside me completely getting in the way of my oh-so-exciting QuickBooks work) and I hear this little gasp followed by, “She’s pretty! Who is this?” He shows me the iPod and I bust-up laughing. It’s this:
At this point, I’m near my wit’s end so decide it’s time for some truth. “That’s a band called Culture Club and that girl is really a guy.”
“Oh, but he has this pretty, curly hair and lots of make-up.”
I went with the only tactic available, “It was the 80’s. It was the thing to do back then.”
“Oh.”
That’s it. That’s all he needed to hear. He soon grew tired of my electronic jukebox and then wanted to see if he could write my name and then put that with some other papers he had stamped and make a book. I told him how to staple it down the side so he could open it up like a book. He left it behind. The nice thing is that his dad left the meeting and thanked me sincerely for having the patience with his son and for entertaining and keeping an eye out for him. You know, one of those feel good moments that come all too rarely nowadays.
I just hope his son thinks it’s all fresh and tight to still be a Culture Club fan.
Listening to: “Walcott” - Vampire Weekend
