Marlin & me
Comments (...)Sometimes I like to pretend that I’m Marlin Perkins. For you youngsters out there who don’t know who I’m talking about, there used to be this show called “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom,” hosted by this old, white-haired guy named Marlin Perkins. The program gave you a close-up view of wild animals in their natural habitat.
I used to watch this show sitting on my Grandma’s green footstool, drinking 7-Up and eating Pringles while good old Marlin would tell me about the mating habits of the wildebeest on the plains of the Serengeti. Nothing goes better with Pringles and 7-Up than some sweet, sweet wildebeest love.
The coolest part about the show was that Marlin hardly ever got out of the RV that they were filming from. No, he had this toady by the name of Jim Fowler that had to get up close and personal with the ferocious, man-eating snakes, lions, alligators and other wild animals, while Mr. Perkins sat in the air-conditioned comfort of the Winnebago, probably drinking 7-Up and eating Pringles. And also, leading into and coming out of commercials, Marlin would try to sell you some life insurance. That’s pretty much the whole show in a nutshell.
Well today at work, I’m putting myself in Marlin’s shoes as I view the wildlife around me from the safety of my cubicle here at the newspaper office. I like to consider it a study in primate behavior. (That probably makes me more like Jane Goodall than Marlin Perkins, but I don’t care.) Why am I studying my co-workers on today of all days you may ask yourself. Well today is a special day here at the office. Today is what is commonly and lovingly referred to as a “Jeans Day.”
Right now as I hunt and peck on this computer keyboard, the southern regions of my body are not covered in their usual cotton Docker apparel. No, today I’m wearing denim made by the good folks at the Levi Strauss corporation. Every now and then, not very often, the office is rewarded with a “Jeans Day,” and this just happens to be one of those blessed holidays.
Some people treasure these days more than I do, so that is why I’m hesitant to even broach the subject. My biggest fear is that office management will take umbrage with this column and decide to end these little perks. If that happens, there is a good chance that the pack will turn on me and will consume their weakest member. I wish that I had Jim Fowler to offer up to them.
Most every other day, we here at the newspaper have to adhere to the employee dress code which states that we “are expected to dress appropriately for a business atmosphere, in such a way as to inspire confidence in our professionalism and ability.” I don’t know if this really helps me that much as I write about boogers and flatulence on a weekly basis.
The dress code suggests that men wear Docker-type pants along with polo or dress shirts. That’s fine with me because I honestly believe that Dockers are more comfortable than jeans because they’re more light weight, and they have these stretchy-elastic thingys around the waist that come in handy due to my ever-increasing orbital mass. I like to refer to them as my “Big-Boy Pants.”
To me, “Jeans Day” is no big deal, but that’s not the prevailing attitude among the other primates in the office. Some of them live for these days, and I do believe that overall, the morale of the entire place seems a little bit higher on these special occasions.
Take today for instance. As I view my office surroundings, peeking over my computer hard-drive, I witness the other primates as they gather around the watering hole and the copying machine, I notice a heightened sense of camaraderie amongst the species. There is a more jovial attitude as they go about their workaday lives. There is an outside chance that productivity might even reach a new plateau. (This would be exactly like a “Wild Kingdom” episode if they started eating bugs off of each other.)
For several years I “worked” in the construction industry. I say “worked” because it was actually more of a case where I did whatever real carpenter-type people told me to do while trying not to lose any body parts on the table saw. I spent most of those years trying to figure out which one of the power tools of death was going to end up maiming me instead of actually learning how to build a house. In retrospect, I probably wasn’t the wisest use of the company’s financial assets.
I bring this up because in the construction industry, pretty much everyday is a “Jeans Day.” I guess I didn’t realize just how lucky I had it back then. I don’t remember ever pulling a knotty, crooked 2x4 through the menacing, loud rip saw, with sawdust blowing up in my face and sweat dripping off my brow thinking, “My job productivity would be so much better if only my thighs and buttocks were covered with a thin layer of cotton instead of this nasty old denim.”
It appears as though I’m starting to ramble a wee bit now, so I guess that it’s about time to wrap this column up. But I want to leave you, the reader, with a couple of vexing questions that are presently on my mind. Does anybody else see the irony in the fact that Marlin Perkins sold life insurance while he was sending Jim out to his possible carnivorous death? I wonder what Jim’s insurance premiums were?
And now that I think about it, I never saw Jim wear jeans.
It really stinks to be Jim.
You can contact Wallace at gwallace@bcrnews.com. You can follow him on his blog at http://gregwallaceink.wordpress.com.
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