Today, I was inspired to document the genesis of one of my most common expressions. Someone at work asked me last week about its origins, and I thought I'd commit it to virtual paper for the generations.
It isn't so much an expression as it is a reference. It's the "Box of Mustaches." I often refer to the Box of Mustaches when someone is commenting on the shoddy or unsatisfactory nature of a gift or prize they've received. Something like, "I cashed in my reward points and all I got was..." and I interrupt, "a Box of Mustaches?"
The roots of the Box of Mustaches grow from a balmy night in Sandusky, Ohio, circa 1975. When I was but a wee one, my family and I frequented
Cedar Point...the king of amusement parks in the Midwest and still rollercoaster capital to this day. We went about once a year, and it was often the high point of any given summer.
Upon leaving the park one humid night, my parents gave in to my insistent (I'm certain) pleas to play a mindless "game of chance". Of course, being a parent now, I understand their eye-rolling, grin-and-bear-it attitude, knowing there's as much chance of winning one of those games as there is finding Atlantis. The only skill involved is plying your parents for their last dollar bill.
But, seduced by the gargantuan teddy bears hanging beneath the canopies of the ping pong in a goldfish bowl, watergun horse race and dart-a-balloon kiosks, I insisted upon trying my luck. My bedraggled parents stuck a few coins or tickets in my hand, and let me choose my event.
I chose the Pick a Duck game. This "test of skill" is comprised solely of watching a few hundred yellow ducks float around a water channel, and plucking one to see the number beneath it. With saucer eyes just able to peek over the edge of the water table, I watched those little rubber waterfowl float by, bobbing and swirling with the promise of unfathomable treasure.
That one feels right, its eye looks funny. NO, that one! It's bill is different from all the others. Finally satisfied that my innate carny worker intuition had given me a moment of lucid premonition, I plucked a duck from the water.
"57!" the strawhat-crowned worker cried with what I imagined was the passion of a World Series umpire, but was probably more like that of a recovering alcoholic calling bingo at the Drain Circlers' Retirement Home outside of Sheboygan as part of his community service sentence. My eyes focused intently on the huge stuffed Pink Panther looming overhead, but the eyes of the attendant trained immediately on the dark, moldy nether-regions beneath the counter. After looking back and forth for a moment, his hand pulled out, yes, said Box of Mustaches.
Whack, he slapped them down in front of me and I'm sure my countenance turned from cherub-like joy to something close to "you just ran over my dog, mister."
It was a garish red and yellow striped box, with white serifed type reversed out of a black bar: "MUSTACHES". It measured about half the size of a Good 'n' Plenty box, and offered a listless rattle and scrape in response to my shaking. I'm sure my parents mustered a half-hearted "Oooh, a box of MUSTACHES, Andy. Good job!" as they prodded my sweaty little form out to the car.
My next memory was sitting in the back seat fumbling with the mustaches. If you've never seen one, it's a hard black piece of plastic, roughly molded and textured to resemble the real thing. There was a straight one, a Rollie Fingers-esque curled model, a stupid little Charlie Chaplin plank and some other crap my crestfallen memory has blocked out. Each of them had a pincer-like device that was intended to clamp into your nostrils. Beyond the fact that my nose was apparently too small to offer enough septum meat in support, causing the mustaches to continually fall into my lap, there's nothing really pleasant about sticking sharp pieces of plastic with razor sharp mold seams into the soft flesh of your nostril. I spent most of the Ohio leg of our return trip to Detroit trying to make those stupid things work, curling my upper lip to try and balance them, plugging my nose around them, hoping my snot would dry and fuse them in place.
Plus, I seem to recall being wholly confused at exactly how a mustache grew. Pondering that insipid little plastic bric-a-brac, I got the impression that mustaches were actually the result of really long nose hair. Since they were clearly intended to go up one's nose, I just assumed that mustaches emerged from there, too, combed into shape by their proud owners. I seem to recall thinking that wasn't too pleasant of a proposition, sitting there mouth breathing with crusty snot flaking above my lips.
Damn that Box of Mustaches!
What's genuinely funny is that stupid Box of Mustaches became the quintessential symbol of disappointment to me. It is to me what the rock in the Halloween bag was to Charlie Brown. I'm not sure when the reference to it surfaced in my life, but I use it quite frequently. Each time it transports me back to that night.
So I've begun to wonder if my kids have concocted a similar reference. Have they inflated a hope so big yet and had it pierced with the sharp needle of reality that it's left an indelible mark upon their psyches? Do they have that Price is Right loser music echoing in their little cortices?
Waa wa wa wa...waaaaaaaaaaaaaDisappointment is an unfortunate part of growing up, but I do hope theirs is as harmless as a Box of Mustaches.
(Apparently, such a box wasn't painless for
these kids.)
Proofreading this prior to posting, I certainly don't want this to sound like I've had a life of disappointment. This is genuinely just an effort to document this weird little part of my being. The emotional yin to this yang was getting the Star Wars Deathstar one Christmas when the entire civilized world was said to have been sold out. The surprise and euphoria of that moment stands as the definitive exceeding of childhood expectations -- in direct opposition to the B.O.M. And I'm equally as interested in Syd and Em relating their equivalents back to me someday.
Labels: Total recall
