Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Practical Jokes: Masculinity

My Dad retired from the Bendix Westinghouse right around the time I graduated from high school.  He took a part time job at a NAPA autoparts store driving their delivery truck around town.  Not all of their trucks had the NAPA hat on the roof of the car but a couple of them did.

My Dad liked the guys he worked with the but owner was younger than he was and Dad considered him a stick-in-the-mud.  It didn't help that the guy in question was a Born Again Christian in the pejorative sense: quick to judge and easy to offend.

As the delivery driver, Dad was often asked to run little errands on his route and one day his boss asked him to stop by the post office to get a roll of 400 stamps.  Which my Dad did, knowing full well that Mr. Holier Than Thou would get his homophobic knickers in a twist when he saw that my Dad had gotten a roll of 400 "Love" stamps.  Obviously that would not do for the ever so manly autoparts store.  Dad got a talking to and had to take the stamps back, which I'm pretty sure he'd factored into the joke trajectory.  You could tell by how he told the story that it was totally worth it..