The Baboon Congress

Brief Revenge

60 Comments

Today’s guest post comes from Clyde.

For twenty years now my son and I have dreamed of making a documentary. We would go to China and find plants that manufacture distinctly Western or American items, such as Easter, Christmas, Halloween, and patriotic items, or any other item that is alien to their ancient culture. We would interview the workers, asking them to guess what the items represent or are for. We would ask them how they feel making things of mysterious purposes, what they judge about us from our artifacts. Today with all the cross-world media, they might know too much for this to be that humorous any more.

Of course, our fun documentary could easily turn into something very serious and sad. One of my favorite Henny Youngman one-liners was how he opened a fortune cookie and found the note “Help, I’m being held prisoner in a fortune cookie factory.” Now it does not seem quite so funny.

I remember a few old jokes or urban legends about line workers getting their revenge in various ways, such as the story of a new Cadillac that had a pesky rattle in it. Finally after a few thousand miles on the car, a mechanic took off the door panel and found a nut with a tag on it reading “I hope this rattle drove you nuts, you rich S.O.B.” There is the Wayne Kemp song sung by Johnny Cash One Piece at a Time.

What brought all this mind was my recent underwear purchase from Target. I bought two six-packs of extra-large Fruit of the Loom jockey shorts, made in Honduras. Each package contained two nested sets of three shorts, a pair inside a pair inside a pair. In one of the four nested sets, I discovered that the middle pair was size large and not extra-large. (I will let you guess how I discovered this.)

Fruit of Doom

I suppose I can imagine ways this happened by accident, but I prefer to think some Honduran line worker occasionally sneaks a smaller size into the middle of a set of three and mutters to him/herself, “Take that, you rich Yanqui hijo de puta.” It is, you must admit, a sneaky attack on the soft underbelly of America.

Because I am right on the border between large and extra large, his scheme did not quite work on me. One wearing and washing and I cannot really tell the difference. Sorry, compadre. I kind of wish it had worked better for you.

Have you ever sent (or received) a clandestine protest?

60 thoughts on “Brief Revenge”

  1. Fun blog, Clyde, and I LOVE your drawing, very funny.

    Right off the top of my head I don’t recall ever sending or receiving a clandestine protest. Will have to ponder that some more, and report back if something comes to mind.

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  2. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    Hey Gringo, those tight undies are a great visual that will keep me chuckling all day.

    I think parenting is an opportunity to observe clandestine protest, an art at which my son excelled. If I said “pick up your, toys. All of them please,” there was always a Lego left on the floor; or “please put your clothes away” resulted in extra clothes which were not that dirty in the laundry basket.

    As a child, I was never that smart about my protests. I was an in your face kind of kid, visibly pouting with arms folded, lip protruding. It was not until I was an adult that someone finally told me, “You can avoid conflict by smiling, nodding, and just doing what you want to do. Lots of times they don’t even notice.”

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    1. I learned the skill of smiling, nodding, and just doing what I want to do late in life, too. I have a “friend” who is the neighbor to call on in a time of crisis, but drives me absolutely batty by telling me what to do – a lot. If we shared a garden – she would tell me not only what to plant, but where. If I wondered out loud what to do in a particular situation, she would not give advice, but a command (“This is what you should do…”).

      Since I’ve always lacked self-confidence and am often confused about what I should do, I took this for a long time…finally I started to smile, nod, and proceed to ignore her advice. It works, but I’ve also grown very weary of her commands, and so have drawn a strict boundary to keep her out of my daily life. The last time we planned to share a garden, though, she kept telling me where to plant my broccoli…and I kept telling her I wasn’t planting broccoli. After the third time, I called her on it and asked “Why are you doing this? I keep telling you I’m not planting broccoli, and you keep telling me where to plant it.” She was taken aback that meek, little me dared to say something like that, but then stopped telling me what to plant. A few weeks later, I decided to not share a garden with her after all.

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        2. no garden yet this year, but i should start some things like basil indoors soon – like a couple weeks ago. last year i mainly grew herbs and fruits such as raspberries, gooseberries, and currants (both black and red), although the fruit crop was disappointing at best (raspberries) or nearly nonexistent (currants and gooseberries). for things like broccoli and other veggies, i get 99% of them at the local farmers market.

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  3. I’ve often wondered the same thing about those third world workers, Clyde. What must they think about us as they spend their day making whoopie cushions or fake vomit?
    Not a protest, but I once bought a pair of pants and in the pocket was a small slip reading,
    “Inspected by number 47. Whoever finds this, I love you.”

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    1. Bill, I ordered the first two Fred Chappell books from Amazon, the only way I could get them. I wrote my first master’s thesis on narration. Narrative voice,persona, tone–all that intrigues me. “I Am One of You Forever” violates several of those supposed rules about the art of narration and brilliantly, I thought. But “Brighten the Corner Where You Are” took me away in a manner few books have. I read it in one sitting. When I stopped for a bit, I had to tell myself where I was. I was that lost. It uses myth the way Joyce does in “Ulysses,” but I thought better. I, of course, related to it as a teacher.
      Anyway, thanks to you and who else recommended it. My son is sending me an Ipad (he and his wife get news one all the time for their work). As soon as I get that, I will see what other Chappell books I can get for the Ipad.

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      1. I finished “I Am One of You Forever” a couple of weeks back — particularly loved the imagery of the white beard expanding and expanding until it filled the house and spilled out the windows!

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  4. funny thoughts clyde. i am sure the trip you and you son would make would be an excellent topic for a documentary. i have been to chinese factories where the have christmas music and little santa claus figures to welcome you and your group every day. they would come up with that hop sing kind of shuffle step and smile like a cheshipre cat and wiggle a santa claus under your nose and say you like ? you like? because all americans like santa and here he is. i spoke with a friend in the business of bringing product in from china and he was exhausted coming into the office at 11. he travels a lot an has a lot of phone calls at midnight when it is 10 am in china and when i asked how his life was with a new baby and another on the way his comment was i have a 14 year old a twelve year old a one year old and one on the way , then i have 400 chinese people which is the same as adding 400 more children. they are all very challenging. the people i have ,met in the factories are all kind of oblivious to the end use of their products. they show up for work and making an umbrella can be as foreign to them as making tungsten blades for the space craft on the mission to mars would be to me. they just get up in the morning and go to work and go to sleep at the end of the day. this sounds terrible but they feel like it is much better than before they were given the chance to work.
    years ago i was attending a dealer convention where the coast to coast hardware store owners were brought in to view the new line up for the coming year. it was an annual occurence and the sales guys would fly in a day early, be given there 4 feet of space or whatever and fill the shelves with product to present to the dealers during the coming days of seminars and walking the show floor. the blizzard in kansas city made that show a long drwan out event with 50 of the 450 expected dealers showing up. the poor dealers were like prey for the sales guys who were standing ready to pounce on the dealers when they came by. we went from a long show in k.c . to the next stop on portland or. i love portland but this trip they were getting a heavy dose of mother nature and the power lines were coming down with ice coating the city. the airports were tough the day we flew in to set up but the day when the dealers were supposed to fly in was the day they shut the airport down. we stood in our booths for the 12 dealers who were in attendance and the stories of family, college days, favorite sports teams and how we felt about the war were all gone through in short order. one guy who was a nice guy was the black flag salesman. he had 4 feet of aerosol cans with different kinds of killers for sale. he had passionate stories to tell about his childhood as the son of an army officer, his wife who helped him pick out his shirt and tie combinations because he was color blind and all in all he was perfect for total assult on his 4 foot display. we taped his cans to each other making a chain of duct tape connect the front can to the cans behind s when he reached to pick up the one for presentation the others came tumbling down. we would wait in anticipation of his grabbing the correct can as he went through his pitch. we filled the top of the can with vasoline so when he took the top off to show the easy spray nozzle they had developed his fingers were filled with glop. as he got gun shy and began anticipating the upcoming pranks we had to get more creative. 10 guys whispering in the corner about how to get him. of course while we were discussing getting him someone was plotting out a good one for you too. i had a constant reappearance of the blessed virgin mary in my 4 ft space. i would be spinning around to show the attributes of the wonderful sprinkler i was selling and there she would be. the hardware store owner would look a little confused and i ould move her over with her arms raised to the heavens and put her on the shelf with lawn mower blades and continue wiht the boys rolling in the aisles behind me. oh golly. you gotta love those pranks.

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  5. Good morning. Good job, Clyde. I think those clandestine protests happen all the time. In fact, there are lots of messages we would like send out that indicate we are not happy which we project in a clandestine way because we don’t want to do this openly. Therefore, I think clandestine protests are just part of life. It is hard to completely hide negative feelings even if we want to do that. Those hidden negative feelings come out in the form a certain look, body language, or comments that aren’t as harmless as they seem. You might pretend that you are not being negative when you send one out a clandestine protest or you may not realize that this what you are doing. I hope I am not being too negative. At least I’m not being clandestine.

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  6. my favorite prank is to place the wake up call in the hotel room of a friend for 345 am. never say another word.
    or the ad in the local paper for a one dollar payment for all used christmas dtrees delivered to the address 123 main street.
    or the free massage offerings at 612 555 1234 we are trying to build our business with this free offfering to find new customers (it just happens to be april first and the person answering the phone has no idea why hte person calling wants to make an appointment and asks for the address and ties available next week.
    i missed the protest part of the question but i smiled at these and thought i had better list them to pass the smile
    oh yeah the hot dog in the ice cube dispencer of the refrigerator and the rubber bands around the sprayer on the kitchen sink if you have one of those (thats my favorite too)

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  8. My face is red. My dad told me the story about the worker’s protest, only in his version: 1) the guy involved was a rich friend of my dad’s who lived in Wayzata, 2) the car was a Buick, 3) and the rattle was a bunch of washers and nuts in a Prince Albert can. The story seemed too good to be true, as urban myths always are. I bought it though, because it had the local content and specificity (which urban legends usually have, too). I should have known better!

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  9. In my job, I often assign rooms or cabins to travelers. Many years back, I had a particularly vile participant; he crossed the line when he called my associate on the program a liar. When the ship sent over the list of cabins, I noticed that one of them was a “partially obstructed view” – which usually means that you have a lifeboat in part of your view out the window. Normally I would harangue the ship and make them give me a different cabin. This time I simply wrote my problem child’s name right next to that cabin number. Ship was sold out, so even with whining, he couldn’t get his cabin changed once he was onboard. Still after all these years, feels like divine retribution!

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    1. my father in law used to be the delta guy at the gate in chicago at ohare who put the little sticker on your ticket that was your seat assignment. he was always amazed at the number of people who came and yelled at him not realizing how easy it was for him to make their life better or worse.

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  10. 30 years ago I bought a nice soft briefcase-like bag (I would hoard bags like that if I could). I found inside a nice stopwatch with the lanyard cut a couple inches up from the watch. Now having once spent a week with a time-study man following me around with his stopwatch and clipboard, I have a theory about how that watch got in there.
    Nice watch. Only stopped stopping about 3 years ago. If a stopwatch doesn’t stop, what do you call it now?

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  11. When I moved back to TH to teach, a few of my sophomores wrote thinks like “Freddy the frog loves Fritoes” in the middle of their first papers and essay tests. So I wrote on the papers, after I figured it out, “Tell everyone that I read tests and papers word-for-word.” The teacher I replaced was famous for not reading what he assigned. I soon realized it was certain kind of good student who tested me out.
    None of the students said anything. A few weeks later I made one of the essay questions be “”Freddie the frog loves Fritoes. Explain.” They loved it. And a few did write answers, funny ones.

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    1. I used to place and sometimes bury tricks and gimmicks in my tests, which was sort of rebellion on my part.
      I had a little bird that came with flowers from kids when I was in the hospital. I would hide it around room, but in a place where you could see it from every desk. I had a half-cluttered and busy room, so this was easy to do. Sometimes I would make one of my test questions, “Where is the bird hiding today?” If I skipped two tests with the questions, the kids would make comments on their tests. Some funny.
      In A.P. English my essay tests always had three questions, the explanations of which were identical from test to test. The kids soon learned to just read the question itself and not the explanation. So every few tests I would bury in the explanation something like “The first person to shout out ‘Mr. Birkholz is stupid’ gets a Snickers bar.”

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      2. love it clyde. i had a teaher like you in ommunications, i loved going to his class. so much so i took it a second year for no credit just because i loved it. del holz whereever you are. thank you

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  14. I think I mentioned this before, but here goes. In the 1950’s my dad had a impish Irish friend named Frank who lived in Sioux Falls and who was a dedicated Democrat. Frank had a neighbor who was a rabid Republican. One day, Frank phoned in a classified ad to the Argus leader that went

    “Disbanding small circus. Elephant for sale.”

    Frank used his neighbor’s phone number as the contact in the ad. His neighbor reportedly got multiple phone calls about the elephont, and he edned up shouting at the callers “I don’t know nothing about no G## Da## elephant.” The neighbor figured out what happened and complained to the paper, and they started a new policy that you had to go down in person to put classified ads in the paper

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    2. PJ, my interest is more along the lines of, “If you want someone to take it off your hands, I could help you with that.” If you have multiple takers that express specific and intense interest, I don’t want to make your choice of recipient more difficult.

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      1. Thanks, bill, I appreciate that. Since BiR indicated her interest first, I’m inclined to let her have it unless she can’t pick it up by this weekend. Two dining tables is our little house is one too many. How about it BiR?

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  17. I guess the guy that peed in the Mayor’s fire boots just before the firemen went out on a call thought he was getting away with a clandestine protest. That protest backfired when the guy that did the peeing got fired from his job working for the city. I think that guy was actually fired for some other things he did.

    He is also the guy who hangs a Rudolf the Red Nosed Rain-deer decoration from a tree by it’s hind leg and attaches a string of red lights to the neck of the deer to look like a deer being hung by a hunter. This apparently is a display designed to celebrate hunting season and to offend anyone isn’t a fan of deer hunting or strange presentations. I think this is a person that actually wants to do things to shock people and he probably told everyone but the Major that he peed in the Mayor’s boot.

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  18. OT to all: I got home from the hospital late yesterday afternoon. An MRI & EEG showed “recent seizure activity” but no cause for it. Other than a painfully-swollen tongue from biting through both sides of it, I’m no worse for the wear. I’ve been told not to drive for at least 3 months and take a heavy-duty sedative-like med. My primary concern is that the esophageal cancer spun off mets to my brain and that this is what triggered a grand mal seizure last Sunday. On April 23, I’ll have a full PET scan which will show any mets – it’s apparently the only test that can. As a writer and a story-teller, I haven’t begun to metabolize what’s just happened to me yet, but wanted to thank all of you for your kind words and concern a couple of days ago.

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  20. You really ought to make that documentary, you know. It would surely win an award, if it would be anything like your writing. Great humorous post. Always appreciate your humor with that underbelly of truth.

    Just a note here: My husband spotted an American Mills kitchen towel “Made in China” for sale in a drugstore/gift shop (photo forthcoming on my blog). Pretty funny, or maybe sad.

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