One of the things I always wanted to do since I was in
college was to wear a mascot uniform. It
didn’t have to necessarily be a college mascot, but I always figured that would
be WAY more fun than walking around in a teddy bear outfit scaring kids at the local
hospital. I don’t know where this desire
came from, but my best guess is that the introvert inside of me wanted to be a major
extrovert without the consequences of people knowing who I am. All of the mascots on TV are always screwing
around with the fans and getting to be an utter jackass while the person inside
remains totally anonymous. This appeals
to me because being a jackass is fun.
My friend “Rick*” and I used to just die laughing at the panther mascot
at our college, and how he would run around the football field with an
unbridled enthusiasm that bordered on special-needs. I always joked to Rick how fun it would be to
be “that guy,” and if given the opportunity to be the mascot - I would have
done it in a second. Alas the
opportunity never came during my college days and my desire went unfulfilled .
Even though I never pursued any further opportunities to
become a mascot in the years that followed college, that idea and dream
remained somewhere in the back of my brain and awaited the day it might be
re-awakened. That day came in September
2010 when I saw the video that is displayed here.
This video shows an incident at an Ohio State University
football game where OSU were preparing to play their intra-state rivals from
Ohio University. As you will see in the
video, the OU mascot (Rufus Bobcat) methodically stalked and targeted the OSU’s
mascot (Brutus the Buckeye) as the OSU football team and cheerleaders took the
field. When his attempt to tackle Brutus at mid-field mildly failed, an
undeterred Rufus resumed his pursuit and attacked Brutus again in the end
zone. This time Rufus succeeded in not
only tackling Brutus, but he also got in some quality head and nut shots at
Brutus’ expense. Needless to say, this
video made me laugh SO hard I cried. To
this day it still makes me laugh and immediately brightens my day whenever I
see it. The best part about the whole
story was that the guy who was in the Bobcat outfit had been planning this
“attack” for over a year. He
tried out for the mascot job with the sole
purpose and opportunity of tackling Brutus the Buckeye in front of 105,000
fans. As you can see, he succeeded with
flying colors. The end result was that
he was banned from ever having any association with the Ohio athletics
department again and Ohio University had to apologize to everyone. If you ask me though, it was totally worth it
and I will forever be a fan of that guy.
Not only was this one of the funniest things I had ever seen, it made me
want to be a mascot again.
Fast-forward approximately four years.
Through a variety of awesome circumstances, this past spring
I was presented with an opportunity to wear an actual college mascot
outfit. My bad ass wife received an
email from the college she had attended asking if anyone on that email distro
was available to wear the official college mascot costume at a local elementary
school function. YES! Plus this wasn’t
just any elementary school, it coincidentally was the school that both of my
kids go to. As she knows about my
weirdo mascot aspirations, she called me and asked if I was interested and if
she should look into it. HELL YES. So she called the college and inquired as to
what needed to be done and where it would all go down. As we were both afraid the mascot
costume-keepers would not let her do it if they knew she wasn’t going to be
wearing it, she conveniently neglected
to tell them that her husband
would probably be wearing the get-up. Amazingly, the college people gave her the green-light and they told her “she” could do it. As you can imagine, I
was pretty giddy when she told me this.
The day of the event, we rolled up to the college and my
wife went into the building where they kept the mascot outfit. As I sat there waiting, I sent a text message
to my friend Rick that said: “In about 10 minutes, there is going to be a college mascot
costume in the trunk of my car.” He
texted back: “Oh my God. It’s happening.”
When my wife came out of the building ten minutes later, she
was carrying a big red bag over her shoulder approximately the size of Andre
The Giant. This thing was E. Nor. Mous. All I could think was “Oh sweet
baby Jesus, what the hell is in that bag?”
We quickly found that it didn’t easily fit into the car, but because
most of the bag was foam we eventually squeezed it into the trunk. Both of us were laughing the entire way to
the elementary school at the fact we had a big ass mascot outfit in the trunk. This..... was really happening.
Check back in a future episode for Part II!
(*) - Names changed to protect the guilty/innocent
Miss previous episode? Click HERE to catch up!
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