Two Decisions I Recently Made...

1. "Would you be willing to shave your eyebrows for our commercial?"

And I quickly said NO, THANK YOU.

I don't need the money, get little satisfaction at playing a taste bud, and I like my eyebrows a lot. My face would be weird without them. So, sorry, candy commercial, but you can count me out.

2. "Would you be willing to wear a [name omitted] mascot costume for a toy convention?"

And I quickly said YEAH, BUDDY!

I'd have done it for free, actually, instead of the big bucks they offered. Come on, this is Kirk they're asking. I'm an idiot that loves mascots and toys, and this is the closest chance I'll ever getting to becoming a human cartoon (side-note and name-drop: Dick Cavett once called me an "animated toy." Swear to God.), so sign me up!

I was young and foolish then. I feel old and foolish now.

For the past four days I've suffered, worked harder than I think I ever have in my life, and definitely experienced more pain than I've ever felt, including the time I was beaten up by a blind date who was twice my size.

I wish I could've blogged every day to complain and scream, but by the time I limped home, I was too tired and weak to do anything but sit in the bath and disinfect my wounds.

Yeah, if there is a personalized Hell for Kirk, it's what I experienced. To paraphrase Neil Gaiman, it sounds like a bad joke. But, like everything else in Hell, it's deadly serious.

Imagine being surrounded by every funzo toy in the world. And you're allowed to play with them because you're dressed like a cartoon! But... you can't. Your hands are covered in weird, four-fingered gloves that reduce your Dexterity by 10 (D&D scores), and you can barely see out of the dark, tunnel-visioned, mesh-covered hole that is your only outlet to the outside world.

Sweat streams down your face constantly, but you can't wipe it off. You can't touch your head, so that headband you naively wore on the first day, when it slips down and blocks your eyes, YOU ARE SCREWED. When your glasses fog up or fall down too far, YOU ARE SCREWED.

So you go sans spectacles and headband and deal with the sweat. It stings your eyes. So it goes. You lose over a pound a day due to sweating. That sounds dangerous.

The head has this adjustable strap that digs into your forehead. You can't get it to fit right, so you try to hold your beak with one hand, as if you are thinking or have a toothache. The strap causes blisters on your forehead. You get a familiar, almost loving, headache as soon as you put the head over yours. It digs and pinches in all the wrong pressure points. You think you're going mad.

You realize why knights of the olden days sometimes suffocated. The head heats up horribly. You exhale in a way that hopefully blows cool air in your face. It doesn't work. You wonder what would happen if you passed out, and it's only pride and a weird sense of cartoon-character honor that prevents you from giving in.

You can't speak, of course. Mascots never speak. So when you eventually cry from the pain and because you think you're blacking out (and believe me, no matter how proud you are, eventually you will cry), you have to do so silently.

The body was made for someone bigger and stronger than you. It hangs heavily on your shoulders, and the straps unmercifully scrape your skin. The blisters bleed. Sweat gets in the open wounds. It hurts, but what're you gonna do?

Worst of all are the feet of this silly, harmless little cartoon character. You can't walk in the way God and Evolution meant for humans to walk. Your feet remain flat all day, you lift them up, almost like you are marching, and you cannot arch your foot.

The tops of the feet dig into your shins. They bleed, too. You put band-aids and socks over them, but with every step, every single step, they cut into your skin. Every time you walk, all day. And the blood and lymph (?) get stuck to the fur and to your cotton socks, and when they dry, they rip a little. This causes you to bleed some more. You take pride in the fact that none of your blood gets on the costume.

Your walk is somewhere between a waddle and a limp, which is good for the character, but it's really because you've pulled some muscle in your leg. The next day, you'll favor your other leg, and then you'll pull that one, too. By the third day, there's a full-on sprain or something. It hurts. The legs and feet are heavy, and you have all day to walk around and wave at people.

Speaking of the people, are they wide-eyed kids or fellow Kirks who appreciate things like mascots? For the most part, no, not really. This isn't Disney World. It's a convention. They've got business to deal with. Children, and this is true, are forbidden at the toy convention. The convention badge actually says, "Please save yourself and your child the stress and embarrassment of being turned away."

You wave, blow kisses, give a thumbs-up or a high-five. The adults wave politely, smile genuinely every now and then, but the majority of what you get are blank stares and feigned ignorance.

And you know what happens to a cartoon that's ignored, right? It dies.

And so died a little part of my soul.

[Note: This post was a bit dramatic and whiney, so I want to end it by saying my bosses were incredibly cool and sweet and nice, and all the suffering was on my part to be a martyr and not give up.

I thought I could make it through the entire convention, and I was right. I can barely walk right now, but I survived, and most amazing of all, there were even moments when I genuinely thought, "This is kind of fun."

Who else can say that after visiting their own personal little Hell?]