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robotnik2004You're right, Marge. It's just like the time I could have met Mr. T at the mall. The entire day, I kept saying, "I'll go a little later, I'll go a little later..." And when I got there, they told me he just left. And when I asked the mall guy if he'd ever come back again, he said... he didn't know.
A friend of mine grew up in Chicago. One of the things he liked about living there, he says, was very occasionally running into Mr. T. You'd be walking downtown, and there he'd be, Clubber Lang himself, crossing the street or eating a hot dog. Haircut, gold chains and all. (This would have been in the late 1980s and early 1990s—well after Mr. T's first fifteen minutes of fame, well before his 1-800-COLLECT and inane WWW renaissance.) You'd see him and say, "Hey! That's Mr. T!" and he'd always wave and say, "Hi, kids! Stay in school!" or something similar. And that would be that. You might go home and tell your Mom, "I saw Mr. T today!" "That's nice," your Mom would say.
What delights me about this story (and I should probably spell it out, since I'm sure it's not coming across in the telling), is both the good-naturedness of it and the mundanity. It was a good thing to run into Mr. T, but really not that big a deal. No bigger than seeing, say, a fire truck, or some ducks, or a lady walking a funny-looking dog. "I saw a funny-looking dog, today, Mom!" "That's nice, dear." I wonder if this is how citizens of Metropolis react when they see Aquaman.
Anyway, besides being an excuse to link to lots of Mr. T pages, all this jibber-jabber is just prelude to a story I had to share (with the small number of you reading this who aren't also reading![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bryant). It's MUCH funnier than the one I just told you about Mr. T: Darth Vader Made Me Cry. I'll link to it again, so it doesn't get lost in the forest of Mr. T pages: Darth Vader Made Me Cry. Go read it. Hee hee hee. It has a nice symmetry with the classic Alec Guinness story, too.
A friend of mine grew up in Chicago. One of the things he liked about living there, he says, was very occasionally running into Mr. T. You'd be walking downtown, and there he'd be, Clubber Lang himself, crossing the street or eating a hot dog. Haircut, gold chains and all. (This would have been in the late 1980s and early 1990s—well after Mr. T's first fifteen minutes of fame, well before his 1-800-COLLECT and inane WWW renaissance.) You'd see him and say, "Hey! That's Mr. T!" and he'd always wave and say, "Hi, kids! Stay in school!" or something similar. And that would be that. You might go home and tell your Mom, "I saw Mr. T today!" "That's nice," your Mom would say.
What delights me about this story (and I should probably spell it out, since I'm sure it's not coming across in the telling), is both the good-naturedness of it and the mundanity. It was a good thing to run into Mr. T, but really not that big a deal. No bigger than seeing, say, a fire truck, or some ducks, or a lady walking a funny-looking dog. "I saw a funny-looking dog, today, Mom!" "That's nice, dear." I wonder if this is how citizens of Metropolis react when they see Aquaman.
Anyway, besides being an excuse to link to lots of Mr. T pages, all this jibber-jabber is just prelude to a story I had to share (with the small number of you reading this who aren't also reading
bryant). It's MUCH funnier than the one I just told you about Mr. T: Darth Vader Made Me Cry. I'll link to it again, so it doesn't get lost in the forest of Mr. T pages: Darth Vader Made Me Cry. Go read it. Hee hee hee. It has a nice symmetry with the classic Alec Guinness story, too.
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Date: 2003-06-03 08:41 pm (UTC)