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.)

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?