As a kid, I used to get some flack from other children about my last name: Huff. What's the obvious joke? The wolf's line from the Three Little Pigs: "I'll HUFF and I'll PUFF and I'll bloooowwwww your house down!" It used to piss me off something terrible.
Then in sixth grade, Jeff Ferree (yes, that was his actual name -- talk about someone asking to get teased about his name!) came up with a NEW way to torture me, by singing the theme song from the corny kid's TV show H.R. Pufnstuf, only changing it to HUFF-n-stuff. I wanted to smack that smirk off Jeff-ferree's face every time he said it.
Ironically, a few years later when we were 16, Jeff and I had become friends and then we even "went out" for a little while. In fact, he was my first date and we went to see the original "Star Wars". We laughed about how he had teased me so mercilessly in elementary school, and before I knew it, I had a new "cool" nickname with my group of friends: "H.R.", short for "H.R. HUFF-n-stuff". And I loved it! Funny how that "huff and puff" thing turned from a negative into a positive.
The reason I'm taking this slightly bizarre stroll down memory lane is two-fold.
- I just came back from attending my niece's school chorus concert, in my old high school, in the school gym that is just as creepy now as it was in the mid-to-late 1970's; being in that building again dredged up all kinds of old memories; and
- I just read that the FBI is demolishing an entire barn in Michigan because they believe, based on "a fairly credible lead" that Jimmy Hoffa is buried underneath it. "FAIRLY credible" is now incentive enough for the government to take over someone's private property and level it to the ground? What's up with that?
Hence the title of tonight's blog post.
Oh, the way my mind works sometimes. Either I am the most creative and inventive person on earth for having the mental capacity to connect a series of unrelated ideas, or I am a deeply disturbed woman for the same exact reason. No need to vote on which YOU think I am. But this next bit of stream-of-conciousness thinking should give you a "fairly credible" indication.
Because after reading this article on the Hoffa/barn story, all I kept imagining is the look on the face of the FBI guy in charge of this investigation, if, after spending all this time and money tearing this farm to shreds because of a "fairly" credible tip, they find not a body but maybe a little kid's metal lunchpail, maybe one from the 70's, maybe even with H.R. Pufnstuf on it, containing the following note:
"Ha, ha -- made you look!"
Now THAT would be poetic justice.
