Other people’s lives always seem more interesting than my own, especially after I’ve finished reading one of those tabloid magazines in the supermarket. I don’t read any one magazine in particular, but I do like to trudge through the mud at the checkout line just to keep up with Britney and her kids.
I wonder what the headlines would be like if I happened to find a way to recycle my teenage spirit and become a “30-something- year-old pop sensation.” I wonder what facts or photos of my personal life would be splashed across the glossy pages of the gossip rags.
I already know of one photo that would make it difficult for me to win the American presidency. The photo was a late-night shot taken in a Las Vegas hotel room after attending a friend’s wedding. Now that I think about it, there’s about 10 or 20 photos from that night alone that would cause the paparazzi to take my picture faster than Eliot Spitzer could put his broccoli on the conveyor belt.
“There’s always dirty laundry of your own,” they say—especially if you like to roll around in the dirt. Yet, some of these stories seem too bizarre to be true. UFOs could land in my backyard before I believe that some of these things that are supposedly happening to people can actually happen to people! Then again, I still think unicorns are real and horseshoes should be an Olympic sport.
I don’t believe everything I read, but if the fluorescent lights in the supermarket are reflecting off those glossy covers just right, suddenly my search for the meaning of life is rerouted, and I find myself gladly reading an article about the horrible details of another human being’s misfortune.
I recently read about a woman from Wichita, Kansas, who had sat on a toilet for two years.
I just can’t believe that
Mr. Whipple is the same name of the
sheriff who rescued this poor woman
from her own bathroom.Her boyfriend was kind enough to bring her food and water during this ordeal, yet her legs had already started to degenerate and her skin had actually started to grow around the toilet seat. Later, the toilet seat had to be surgically removed from her body at the local hospital.
The article also explained that it took two years before her boyfriend decided to seek help from the local police department. When her boyfriend finally alerted the authorities, Sheriff Whipple from the Wichita Police Department arrived to assist the woman by prying her off the toilet. He successfully accomplished this task using a crowbar.
Call me crazy, but isn’t Mr. Whipple the character name of Dick Wilson in Charmin’s “Don’t squeeze the Charmin” toilet paper commercials? I just can’t believe that Mr. Whipple is the same name of the sheriff who rescued this poor woman from her own bathroom. I was so amazed at the coincidence that I immediately contacted the folks at Ripley’s Believe It or Not to verify if the tabloid had reported the story accurately.
[Art by Eric Sengelen]
A rep from Ripley’s replied with the following statement, “…Although the probability is very low that a man named Mr. Whipple could have possibly rescued a woman from her own toilet, Ripley’s Believe It or Not does believe, after checking with the Associated Press, that this is a real occurrence.” Needless to say, that night a UFO landed in my backyard, and my family enjoyed a wonderful eggplant parmesan with the Martian crew.
The bottom line is that if you happen to be helplessly stuck on a toilet, or find yourself spending more money on good sex than good food, you’d probably make either a good governor or tabloid sensation. Initially, being governor might sound like a hard job, but something tells me the job gets easier and easier as time goes on. Life can seem that way sometimes, especially when everyone else is ultimately concerned with listening to an iPod, waiting in line at Starbucks, or visiting the Mayflower Hotel in Washington DC to perhaps squeeze a little bit more than just a roll of toilet tissue.
Currently, I don’t have any plans to run for governor and, at the moment, I don’t have any plans to sit on a toilet seat longer than a couple of days. However, with a little bit of luck, maybe I will end up with my own glossy tabloid cover page someday. If the road of creative success is paved with paparazzi pictures of how ugly the beautiful can be, then I’m sure one day my cellulite dimples and plastic surgery nightmares will somehow make the cut… even if extensive surgery is required to erase the imprint of a toilet ring from my cheek bones.
Maybe I’m better off staying home, changing diapers, and reading Curious George books to my kids. It might not be the life of a Hollywood insider, but it sure beats the stress of having to put on my fancy, square-toed shoes every day. And that way, if the paparazzi do decide to follow me around, all they’ll see is a good father who could, at times, be accused of sitting on the toilet a little too long…reading the tabloids.
