Saturday, April 2, 2011

Before I had kids, I was a BumbleBee.

Yes, I was a BumbleBee.
Every Saturday & Sunday, actually.
Sometimes, I wasn't just a BumbleBee.
I was a Dog and a Fish, as well.

My first job at the ripe old age of 14 & 9 months,
was to dress in character for children's birthday parties.
I vividly remember my interview.
I was asked to try on a costume.
The only available they had at the time was Itchy Richie the Dog.

Itchy Richie was a giant black and while dog.
Aside from the fact the head was a little wobbly on me, despite the clips,
I found myself dancing around like a fool.
I was having a blast.

Until my potential employer started laughing at me.
She unclipped "my" head,
and told me I was hired for making her laugh.

Was it my wonderful portrayal of Itchy Richie?
Was it my hilarious dancing?
No, it was the fact I put the body suit on back to front and Itchy Richie's tail was at the front...
thus looking a tad inappropriate.

Knowing my bosses were just as filthy minded as I was put me at ease,
I knew I would enjoy my time there.
My extra large pay packet was a bonus.

I have many wonderful memories from my employment.
It changed my perspective on a lot of things.
For example, it only occurred to me then that Humphrey may have been a girl, too!
 I'd often get looks of surprise after I came down the stairs after getting changed back into my uniform.
Mothers would look at me and smile, impressed.
Dad's would look somewhat relieved.

Their 4 - 5 year old children eyed me with suspicion, because they hadn't seen me go up, nor was I in sight when they were up there.
I vividly remember being caught coming down the stairs by an older child saying,
"I know what you were doing up there?"
Because I was only 7 or 8 years older than him, I was equally immature in my response,
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah", he replied. "You were helping the guy who dressed up as BumbleBee get away, but I know he's not real!"
....Okay kid, you caught me out. IDIOT!

We'd often do home parties, as well.
On one particular party day, BumbleBee was at the cleaners.
I had to be "inflatable" BumbleBee, instead.
The costume was the same, but the bottom needed to be inflated.
This was okay, except inflatable BumbleBee had a slow leak.

My co-worker and I decided that should inflatable BumbleBee go down, I would pat his arm,
and he'd end my performance long enough to re-inflate.
But we shouldn't have any issues as I wouldn't be out there that long.
Great idea, yeah?
No!

Our performance was going superbly when I heard the leaking air,
 and felt myself sagging.
Oh shit, I thought.
[Obviously, I couldn't say "oh shit"].
I patted my co-worker as planned,
but rather than remember our arrangement,
he thought I was patting his arm to get him to play BumbleBee's favourite song.
"It's okay Bumble, we'll sing the song now, can you show the kids the actions?"

All the while, I am patting his arm, thinking "No, I can't show them the actions, I am going down!!!"
After about three minutes, it became obvious to the parents that I was decreasing in size.
This was met with giggles before my co-worker [whom I was still patting, quite hard by this stage] realised and made up an excuse to get me out of there.

The rest of our performance went off without a hitch, after I inflated enough to bluff my way through.
The parents, despite my apologies, were happy with the way we'd done things,
and really enjoyed the bit where I was deflating before their very eyes.

Ah, it's nice to have a trip down memory lane,
and by dressing up in costume, there was many a "trip" to be had.

What was your first/best/worst job?


3 comments:

  1. That is hilarious! We recently went to Disney World and I always wondered who the people were inside the characters and what they were thinking!

    I've been pretty lucky with work. When I was a teenager I sliced bread and cleaned hotel rooms for next to nothing, but I still enjoyed it. x

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  2. Aside from my stint as a BumbleBee all my other employment was at Service Stations. I have a lot of fun stories to share about them, but will wait for another day.

    Being dressed up was fun, but incredibly sweaty work. Dancing around for kids who have endless energy is hard, doing it with a costume on, is even harder, as you could imagine.

    I would have loved to clean hotel rooms. My Mum and Nana used to do it years and years ago and had some weird and wonderful stories. For example, many years ago there was one awful customer who would bring his "other women" in behind his wife's back, so after being particularly rude to my Nana, she stabbed holes in his condom stash. Haha.

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  3. My first job consisted of working in a milk bar for a seedy old italian!!! Worst job ever! And for $5 an hour, it now makes me wonder why I bothered! His brother and him used to sit there and talk italian and stop and look at me with they're seedy looks, and then keep talking. What I would have given to have known what they were saying, but there again I'm kind of glad I don't know lol

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