by Jon McDonald
But then a shadow passed over him as he realized he would be heading to the airport way too early the next morning. He would barely have time for his favorite Mexican breakfast, huevos motuleños - a tortilla with fried egg and banana, ham and peas smothered in tomato sauce and melted cheese - in the hotel’s rooftop restaurant with the morning breeze nudging sweetly off the sea. Then he would have to scurry to the cab with his tightly packed carry-on, wearing trousers, his pinching socks and a long sleeve shirt to shield him from the air-conditioning on the plane.
Reluctantly he rose from his perch on the wall and looked wistfully around at the passing scene; the ferry pulling out from the pier into the crystal waters towards Cozumel; the teenagers texting; the families trudging up from the beach, the kids too red and too tired. He gave a nod to the fruit ladies, and started off towards his hotel.
An elderly Mexican couple was sitting on a bench, shaded by a fish restaurant, eating sliced papaya – their treat for the afternoon, when George passed by with his mango sorbet.
The woman commented, “You know, I feel so sorry for these pasty gringos with their little chicken legs, and their Father Christmas bellies. Look at that guy there. I bet anything he works in some overheated, over air-conditioned office tower from eight till five every day. Then he goes home and microwaves a frozen dinner, opens a can of – what do they drink there? – Budweiser, and falls asleep before the news.”
Her husband looked up with little interest and nodded his head. “Yes, I feel sorry for those people from first world countries.” He nodded again, and squeezed more lime on his papaya, and felt the breeze rising from the ocean, as the sun declined towards Mayan temples that slept peacefully, hidden by jungles with rainbows of parrots.
Petey’s Balloon Socks Go Viral
Dr. Peter Benjamin Crenshaw was passed out colder than a frozen daiquiri. His graduation with a PhD in astrophysics had occurred only yesterday. And after two years for a master’s degree and three more for the doctorate, including a four hundred and fifty seven page dissertation, Petey felt he had the right to celebrate really, really hard. And that’s exactly what he did.
Somehow he got home. Oh yeah, with the help of his best bud, Marla, who was pretty pissed off with him just now.
Now, Marla was a very pretty young woman. She worked as a secretary in a law firm. She and Petey were both in their mid-twenties. They had grown up together in the same small town in Ohio and had both ended up in Chicago. They were not a romantic couple, however, but really good friends and spent a lot of time together.
Petey was sprawled out, flat on his bed, dead to the world, snoring, with dribble running down the side of his face. He was still completely dressed except for his shoes and socks. His feet were sticking out over the end of the bed. Now Petey was a big guy - at least six feet four and thin as a rail, but he had surprisingly small feet for a guy his size Marla was staring at them and wondering if it was true what they said about the size of the feet being in relationship to the size of the – well, you know.
She had managed to coax him up the stairs to his apartment, and maneuvered him into the bedroom and onto his bed earlier this morning. And as she was pretty beat herself, she’d collapsed on the living room sofa and zeed out for about four hours before she got up and made coffee.
She brought some in to Petey, but he was still passed out and could not be revived. Boy, what had he chugged down last night? Marla collapsed on the floor next to the dresser on a pillow, drinking her coffee and really bored. She was afraid Petey was not going to stir for some time.
Marla thought about going home, but she was a little concerned about Petey in this condition, and thought she ought to stay till he came back into the land of the sober.
As she drank her coffee she surveyed the room. It was almost like snooping. She felt both a little thrill and a very tiny twinge of guilt. She worked her foot under his bed and slid out a magazine. Uh oh. What have we got here? She picked it up. Boooorrrring. A scientific journal –Astronomy & Astrophysics – his field of study. Why couldn’t it have been a nice juicy girly mag or even better - Inches - a magazine that would have greatly appealed to her somewhat prurient curiosity about gay men. Oh well. She slid the magazine back under the bed. But what was this? She felt something else rather strange and pulled out a single latex rubber glove. Hmmm. What could this be for? Not something she cared to speculate about in too much detail. She held it up and looked at it. She stretched it and let it snap back. A sly smile tickled.
She scooted over to the foot of Petey’s bed, stretched out the rubber glove, and carefully inserted it over Petey’s right foot. She slipped it down till it covered his entire foot with just the fingers of the glove waving proudly in the air like the comb of a rooster. Yes, that was it. She named it “Cockadoodle.” She ruffled the extended fingers of the glove, then with a giggle, crawled over to Petey’s desk, found a Sharpie and scooted back to the bed.
With great concentration and painstaking care she drew Cockadoodle’s face on the glove at the bottom of Petey’s foot. Oh yes. Very alert. Just a touch of the Frenchman about Cockadoodle. A smart little pencil thin moustache. Seductive eyes. A jaunty grin. Just the right attitude. But wait. Something was missing. Cockadoodle needed a companion. The left foot could not be left un-personified.
Marla scurried to Petey’s bedside table. She opened the drawer and fished about for what she hoped would be there – and it was. A condom. Extra large. Okay, well, that answered her earlier question, sure enough. She tore open the wrapper, unrolled it and worked her way back to Petey’s left foot. She carefully expanded the condom and slipped it over the foot.
Uh huh. Oh yeah. Looked like a “Mr. Smarty” to her. She grabbed the Sharpie and went to work. Mr. Smarty got a face. But not quite complete. She pondered.
She crawled back once again to Petey’s desk and opened the paper shredder, pulling out a handful of shredded paper, and picking up some cellophane tape, she scooted back to Mr. Smarty. She taped the paper to the toes of Petey’s foot, which was also the top of Mr. Smarty’s head, creating a fine head of hair, and broke out in a big smile. Yes, that was absolutely what was needed. She now had her dynamic duo. Well, almost. Now they needed voices. She waggled Petey’s heels, the heads nodding and conversing, and squeaked out two very different and distinct voices for each character, and to no great surprise, Cockadoodle had a French accent. She proceeded to enact a little drama about how Cockadoodle really couldn’t be bothered to go to the market today, and would Mr. Smarty please pick him up a pack of smokes? Mr. Smarty, however, was disinclined and promptly declined to go out at all - to Cockadoodle’s great consternation.
Having thus performed her little play Marla sat back and contemplated the situation. She observed that Petey was still vastly asleep and unlikely to awaken any time soon to appreciate her amusing playette. She needed a much wider audience. She looked around the room and seeing Petey’s laptop scrambled over and lugged it back. After placing it on a chair, she pulled up to the foot of Petey’s bed. She logged on, adjusted the camera, and opened the camera software. She then proceeded to introduce the world to Cockadoodle and Mr. Smarty in a rambunctious and delightful first episode of The Petey’s Balloon Socks Show, which she subsequently posted on You Tube.
Little did she know.
◘ ◘ ◘
Despite being grossly hung-over, Petey gave a window-shattering shriek when he checked his email.
“What?” Marla called out from the kitchen, where she was wrestling with the delicate intricacies of a smoked salmon and goat cheese omelet.
“There are four thousand seven hundred and thirty-six emails in my inbox,” he called back. He knew he was a bit out of it, but come on. He rubbed his eyes and looked again. Yep. He closed out the inbox and reopened it. Now there were over five thousand. He thought there must be something wrong with the laptop and gave it a punishing thump. Nope, still there. He opened the first one.
“Where can I get a pair of those ado
rable socks? They are a MUST HAVE!”
The next: “I am in love with your feet. Cock-a-doodle-doo! Will you marry me?”
And another: “What is this filth? You ought to be ashamed!”
“MARLA…!” Petey called out to the kitchen in desperation.
“Just a minute….” She came scrambling in with two plates of omelet and toast. She thrust one at Petey. “Here. You need something solid in your stomach.”
“Look at this…” he pointed to the inbox. Turning to her in perplexity, he asked, “What’s going on here?”
“Oh shit,” Marla managed to squeak out.
“You know about this?”
“Well I have a pretty good idea.” She sat down next to him and took over the computer. “While you were s-o-o-o out of it I got bored. I played a little footsie game and recorded a little tribute to your feet. But I have no idea why you would be getting all these emails.” She went to You Tube and opened Petey’s video and played all five minutes of it for him.
Much to both of their surprises Petey’s email address was embedded at the bottom of the entire video. Marla pointed to the email address. “I don’t understand that. I didn’t put your email there. I just posted what I thought was a cute little prank.”
“What camera did you use?” Petey asked.
“Well, the one in your laptop.”
Petey waggled his head from side to side. “Yeah, well that’s why. I use my laptop camera all the time when I’m on video conference calls with colleagues. I have my email address embedded in the video so they can send me stuff while we’re conferencing.” He looked more intently at the video. “What is all this shit anyway? Are those really my feet?”
“Fraid so,” Marla answered sheepishly.
“Boy I must have been really out of it.” He peered at the video intently. “I suppose I’m Cockadoodle and you’re Mr. Smarty. Is that it?”
“Well there’s no deep social comment intended. Wasn’t meant as anything but a playful lark. I’m so sorry about the email address. I’m sure it’s nothing and will quickly fade away.”
“Uh huh.”
“If you like I’ll scroll through the emails and see if there’s anything important and delete the rest for you. It’s the least I can do.”
“Don’t you have to go off to work or something?”
“It’s Saturday, stupid.”
Petey gave a big sigh. “Okay, yeah, well go through them. Let me know if there’s anything important there that I need to respond to.” He was somewhat at loose ends as he was all finished with the university, his dissertation, and the push and shove of graduation. He thought a nice soaking bath would be just the thing to help him with the lingering hangover.
Petey took his bath while Marla sorted through the emails. It was not difficult to pull out the interesting ones from the frivolous ones, which she would delete. To her surprise there were several interesting threads running through a lot of them. The first was that Petey had dozens of marriage proposals. Who know there where so many people into funny feet. Secondly, many people wanted to buy the balloon socks. The third was that there were many requests from the media for interviews and articles. And the last was that many people wanted Petey to present himself on a social networking site – most suggesting Twitter – wanting up to the minute updates on the adventures of Cockadoodle and Mr. Smarty. Marla realized they had a gold mine if they played it right.
Marla immediately set up a Twitter account named “Cock-a-Smarty” and did a global reply to all the inbox emails with the new Twitter address. Then she sorted out the media requests, printing them out for Petey to consider. Then finally - Marla did an Internet search on manufacturers who could mass produce the balloon socks for an online Internet store. She was cookin’.
“Petey?” Marla poked her head through the bathroom door. Petey was snoozing in the tub. He slowly opened one eye and turned on the hot water with his left foot – was that Cockadoodle or Mr. Smarty?
“May I come in? We’re not modest are we?” Marla inched her way into the bathroom and sat down on the toilet with a hand full of papers. “We need to talk.”
◘ ◘ ◘
“What do ya think?” Marla asked, holding up conventional sock puppets of Cockadoodle and Mr. Smarty fitted on her upright hands. These were the first prototypes to arrive from Marla’s scouring of sources for merchandise for the new website.
Petey wrinkled his nose. He tapped his bottom lip with his forefinger. “Ummmm. Don’t think so. What do you think?” he asked.
She turned them to face her and tried out the squeaky voices, but they came out all wrong. She shook her head. “Nah. Think you’re right. They don’t have the suppleness of latex. Too bad, these are pretty cheap and we could have had a nice markup on them.”
She opened a second box of samples. These were actually made from real balloons – with faces silk screened on. Absolutely disgusting. They looked like ginning sausages.
The third envelope produced what would turn out to be the winners - a very handsome Cockadoodle and Mr. Smarty. Just like the originals, the samples were made from a rubber glove and a condom, but without the paper hair on Mr. Smarty – using instead an orange yarn for the hair and with the addition of cute freckles. A nice touch, Marla thought. They were now ready to launch their new cyber business.
Marla quit her job at the law offices to answer emails, post on Facebook and Twitter, and manage the website selling the balloon socks. The manufacturer of the puppets would drop ship the orders so Marla didn’t have to deal with shipping. And before long they were taking in roughly twelve thousand dollars a week in pure profit - each. Even an astrophysicist doesn’t make that kind of money just starting out.
Now Petey considered himself a serious kind of guy. As a scientist with a PhD and several offers from leading universities, he had a career plan well worked out and seemed on the verge of taking off to stellar heights of academic achievement. But instead, Petey was being interviewed for publications, making personal appearances at supermarkets, and making a fool of himself in various media venues. He had his feet up in the air more often than a twenty-dollar hooker.
Today he had his feet up on the edge of Ellen’s desk on national TV, sporting Cockadoodle and Mr. Smarty in the latest episode of The Petey’s Balloon Sock Show. Marla was hidden behind the desk manipulating Petey’s feet and carrying on in squeaky voices to the delight of the studio audience and Ellen. The latest episode involved Cockadoodle lashing out at Mr. Smarty for not taking out the garbage. Mr. Smarty replied that he had a lot on his mind, and besides he had to wash his hair. That was it. And the audience went crazy with excitement.
On the way home Petey was brooding. This was not how he had seen his young career progressing.
“Marla, I need to have some input on these show scripts. I mean what is all this silly stuff about anyway? Huh? I mean, come on – taking out the garbage?”
Marla gave him a searing look. “Yeah, well who does all the work anyway? I manage the website, answer all queries, do the accounting, prepare the show, and what do you do? Plop your feet up in the air and wiggle your toes.”
He considered what she said. “Yes, you’ve been really great at managing everything. But where are we going with all this? Is it just the money? We should be trying to do something constructive with these shows. I want to write the scripts from now on, okay. There are too many world issues out there that need addressing – poverty, the economy, corruption, AIDS.”
Marla gave a snort. “Boy that would shut us down quicker than a cop at a working girl’s tea party. People don’t come to us for message. They’re fed up with message – reality – all the big shit of their daily lives. They just want a giggle and a moment to forget. Play that card of yours and it would be like putting on your shoes. Cockadoodle and Mr. Smarty would completely disappear.”
“Yeah, see what you mean. But something’s got to happen. We can’t just go on like this forever. I mean how long will anyone care about
this stuff. Before you know it the next big thing will come along and we’ll be stuck with boxes and boxes of rubber gloves and condoms.”
Marla smiled. “Well at least you can have some fun using the condoms. Extra large, right?”
◘ ◘ ◘
And then…there it was. Variety - front page. In seventy-two-point type - PETE’S FEET TWEET. A massive article about the creation of false celebrity through the manipulation of social media. Scoop or Scam? The editors had their fierce blades out, wielding fury – crushing the fragile simplicity of Cockadoodle and Mr. Smarty. “The exultation of the ridiculous”, they called it. “Are the effects of social media viral or virulent?”
How could they survive that?
Well, at first their fans rallied - indignant blogs, shrill tweets, Facebook outrage. But then the first little cracks began to appear. Sales began to slump on the website. Hits on The Petey’s Balloon Sock Show began to slacken. The media requests were now almost non-existent.
Then one morning Petey awoke, and with a sigh of relief, decided that today was the day to review his academic job offers and seriously begin considering what he wanted to do next. Marla, too, was beginning to consider other options. She began searching for new merchandise for the website. She was not going back to being a secretary again - thank you very much.
Within two months Petey had relocated to Arizona, working at a university with a much-reduced salary, but happy, once again, to be wearing regular socks – and shoes.
Marla became sole owner and chief of an Internet company selling vacuum cleaners and household appliances.
The two kept in close touch from their respective worlds and remained good telephone friends, chatting weekly.
Then one day the phone rang in Marla’s office.
