Mistaken Identity.....

I apologize for my extended absence from the blogging world, but I have had so much to do and so little time, energy and hands to get it all done!  But I'm back, and hopefully, with a vengeance!

Well, I guess I'm in the mood to tell the most recent funny story about my latest Z-List moment......  This "event" took place on Wednesday night.  I was at one of my weekly appointments with Dr. Dirty Dorothy and her Good Time Girls at a little establishment (now my home away from home) known as Missie B's.   It was a pretty busy night for a Wednesday and considering the ground was snow and ice covered, it was an unusually large crowd!

Dirty Dorothy and her girls were doing their thing that night and doing it pretty darn well.  The sounds of drunken men and women (and sometimes a cross between both sexes) echoed from wall to wall.  The general mood was a happy one; people gathered in large groups and would spontaneously burst out with laughter at any given moment.  One group of newbies in the crowd seemed to be drawing a lot of attention from passersby and were often times the focus of comments made by Ms. Dorothy Gale herself.  It turns out that one or two of the people in this group were friends of Dorothy's and they were helping to stage the kid-friendly, family centered, effervescent production of Sesame Street Live that was in town for the weekend.  In tow with these two stage managers were Cookie Monster, Elmo and Big Bird, or the people that portrayed them in the stage version of this PBS phenomenon!  At one point Dorothy had called each one of them to the stage, introduced them by their human name, their character name and declared whether they were gay, straight, and/or taken!

My memory fails me in remembering the names of two of the three characters, but Cookie Monster I will never forget.  Drew was his name....  I think he may even have been a KC native!?  See, the memory is giving me fits....  Anyways, Drew/Cookie is really the only one that we will need to remember for this EPIC tale!

Back to the story.....

So, after all the Sesame Streeters were introduced, Dorothy made some sort of comment about Sesame Street and Shrek both being in town, and that maybe Shrek would show his face sometime soon too!?  I'm not sure of her exact comment, but it definitely involved Shrek being around at some point, or something!  Man, I hope I'm not totally butchering this story! :-(

Anyways..... After the show had ended I decide that it's definitely time for a pit stop to the men's room.  I saunter through the bar, knocking into the millions of patrons on the way.  I finally reach my destination just before my bladder explodes covering the entire bar with urine!  That definitely would have been disgusting!!!

So, it's my turn to step up to the urinal.... thankfully I'm not pee-shy!  As I'm standing there handling my business, Cookie Monster approaches the urinal next to me.....

WOW!!! Can you believe it!?  I'm literally 3 feet away from Cookie Monster, in his human form, but none the less it's Cookie!!!!

Or, that's what I should have been thinking, but somehow I was rather unimpressed!!!  It was at this very moment that he decides to lean over and talk to me.  Here's how our conversation goes:

Cookie:  "Hey there!"
Me: "Hi!"
Cookie: "How's it going?"
Me: "I'm alright I suppose...."
Cookie: "That's great!  Hey, can I ask you a really important question?"
Me: "Sure....?"
Cookie: "Are you Shrek?  Please tell me you're Shrek..."

Pause

Me: Looking around to see how many people heard this....and wanting to cry a little "OH MY GOD!!!!  Are you serious?  Do I look like Shrek?  I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to feel about these comments Cookie! No, I'm not Shrek!!!"
Cookie: "Are you sure?"
Me: "Yes, I'm POSITIVE I'm not Shrek!!"
Cookie: "Well, Dorothy mentioned that Shrek was here somewhere, so we figured that she was talking about you!"
Me: After zipping and buttoning my pants "Well, sorry to burst your bubble but I am the furthest thing from Shrek, or at least I hope!  I mean, the last time I checked I wasn't a big green OGRE!!!"

I leave the bathroom with shattered self-esteem and a slight grin on my face.....  I immediately make a bee line to Dorothy to inform her of the misfortune she has just caused in my life!  After I explained the situation to her, she let out the biggest laugh in the world!  She apologized.... but laughed through the whole thing!!!

I retold this same story to a group of Michael and his friends and needless to say they all had the same reaction!  Was/Am I missing something?  Do I really look like this crazy DreamWorks character?  I mean, I know I'm not the skinniest twink in the joint, but am I really an ogre?

So, on my way out of the bar, probably to overdose on some pills, jump off a bridge or to purge in the privacy of my own home, I bump into none other than the entire cast of Sesame Sesame leaving the bar! Mortified, I tried to slip by them unnoticed; fearing they would start making donkey noises or throwing onions at me or something! Well, my escape plan was spoiled when Elmo spotted me.

Elmo: "OMG....I can't believe we thought you were Shrek!!!"

Me: "Yeah, me neither!"  "I'm not really sure how I'm supposed to take that.  Should I be offended or flattered?"

Cookie: "Oh come on, you don't look like Shrek...."

Me: "Ummm.... apparently I do."

Elmo: "Honestly, we saw that you had tons of people around you, so we figured you had to be someone important.  People were like flocking to you; hugging and kissing you.  We just knew you were Shrek from the musical that's in town."

Me:  "Well, I hate to disappoint you, but I'm not Shrek.  I'm just Jeremy......"

So, as we parted ways I wished them good luck with the opening of their show and ran to my car in hopes that no one else had heard our conversation, or would confuse me for one of the hippos from Fantasia or something!

Looking back I guess I shouldn't complain. After all, I was mistaken for someone famous, which is like a dream come true for me! Unfortunately, that person just happened to be a big, green, smelly ogre from a BLOCKBUSTER children's cartoon!! That's right...Blockbuster!  I knew I was always destined for fame..... I just never pictured that my fame would come from being Shrek's body double!

I guess that's just a day in the life of me......