Chin & Butt Same Direction: REID #257
And fresh Chipotle
SHORT:
Really hoping the IT guy enjoys the dozens of Photobooth videos of me singing during lunch breaks when I eventually return my work laptop!1
MEDIUM:
Keeping it short and sweet this week. I’ve got stuff to do, and I bet you do too.
I went to the grand opening of a Chipotle a few days ago. A delivery driver and I both looked up at the balloons outside the door and said “Beautiful” at the same time...
Everyone inside had the unmistakable spring of new-Chipotle in their step.
May you, dear Reider, move through the week with that same spring.
If you need to conjure it, picture people beaming (in kinda honestly a scary way) on either side of the pinto beans.
LONG:
On Monday, I spent 30 minutes outside an Upper East Side apartment screaming on the phone to my mother about AI, before heading inside and taking the elevator up to the 23rd-floor “lounge” for a 6-year-old’s birthday party.
The birthday girl (my friend’s niece) had requested her favorite food: hot dogs. A platter was provided. There was also excellent ice cream, which both she and I managed to get all over our clothing in what I’d describe as parallel—but unrelated—incidents. (The incident being: having a great damn time!)
After a brief gymnastics and interpretive dance performance (hers), she invented a game in which we had to guess each other’s favorite colors. If you guessed correctly, you received anywhere from 28 to 1,000 points. No one understood the scoring system, but we were told in no uncertain terms that reaching 100,000 points would result in a surprise party being thrown in your honor— immediately, right there in the room. It was unclear how she would coordinate such an event on such short notice (and hopefully everyone’s favorite food is hot dogs!), but I appreciated the confidence.
My gift was a Sonny Angel doll I’d bought last minute at a boutique that sells things like grapefruit-scented hand soap for dogs. On the train ride there, I began to panic. The doll, though angelic, was pantsless. Its whole plastic butt was exposed. Worse yet, there was a small but unmistakable genital situation happening — a penile lump — and I wasn’t sure how her mom would feel about that.
I spiraled. Which was worse: showing up without a gift, or handing a 6-year-old a tiny nude cherub with what could be interpreted as a penis? What if she shouted, “It has a penis!” and then I became the adult who brought a penis doll to a child’s birthday? Her mother would be justified in asking, “Oh my God, Reid, why did you bring my daughter a penis doll?”
Ultimately, I split the difference and pulled it out of my tote bag secret-style, running it by the mom (and everyone else at the party lol) before presenting it to the b-day girl (unwrapped, which made it weirder).
She looked at it and said, “It has a pepper on it’s head,” (which it did), before flipping said pepper-head around so it’s butt and chin were facing the same way.
C U Next Tuesday
Thank you for subscribing to this newsletter. Sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s not (like when ppl slip on ice). If you want, you can also check out the archives.
Sincerely,
Reid Pope
Snack Of The Week: tie between fresh Chipotle, hot dog, and ice cream
Wonder if he knows Sara Bareilles’s “Gravity” or if he’ll be floored hearing it for the first time via my sepia-toned rendition
Hand soap for dogs really got me good