Have you ever found yourself in a situation so ridiculous that it would be impossible to later tell a story about? A situation so bizarre that people would assume you're making it up? I found myself in a situation much like that two summers ago. My story takes place in a seemingly deserted neighborhood on a hot summer day. And I'm sorry to inform you that everything I'm about to reveal to you is a true story. Enjoy!
Me and my friend were sitting around in my basement dying of boredom. We had just returned home from the lake and were winding down from the activity. After all the excitement from boating and tubing, we were rather lacking something fun to do while hanging around my house. Suddenly, my friend came up with the genius idea to play "Truth or Dare"! I know . . . what good ever comes out of that game. But it was just the two of us, so we decided to give it a go. We went through a couple rounds just doing stupid dares like "I dare you to do a handstand in the neighbor's yard" type of thing or truths like "Tell me who you like!" Y'know, the usual. But then my friend came up with a completely outrageous dare. And thanks to this dare of hers, we found ourselves in the most awkward situation you could ever imagine.
My friend had spotted my penguin suit. Yes, my penguin suit; a full body penguin costume. If you need a visual here ya go.
"I dare you to wear that penguin suit and waddle around to block." Walk around my neighborhood in a penguin suit? Sure! No problem! Seriously, my neighborhood is so small that there's never anyone outside and there's never a reason for people to drive through the neighborhood either. I was positive no one would see me so I agreed. I pulled on the costume and set out on my adventure. I got around the entire walk without anyone seeing me. We arrived back at my house and it was my turn to dare my friend. "I dare YOU to wear that penguin suit and waddle around the block." So she did. And she too got around the neighborhood without anyone seeing her. By now, we were feeling pretty confident in the fact that we could run around looking like crazy people without anyone knowing the difference. Again, it was my friends turn to dare me. "I dare you to fit into this penguin suit with me, and we'll BOTH walk around the block!" Oh dear god.
I invite you to take a look back at the picture of the penguin costume. Can you tell me how two people could possibly fit in it? It seems pretty much impossible. But let me tell you, we managed it. She put the costume on first, and I squeezed in it too. We each had one arm in a flipper, and one arm hanging by our side. Our heads were competing for the head hole, and there was absolutely no room to move around. I wish I had a photo to share with you of how ridiculous we looked waddling down the street. We were an obese, four legged, two faced penguin. Honestly, we could barely even walk and could hardly see where we were going. We were killing ourselves laughing and could almost forget that we were out in public. But it was okay because no one had seen us the previous times, so why would anyone see us now? Oh how wrong we are.
We were on the main stretch of the street when we heard the bass. Yes, we could hear music and the hum of an engine. A vehicle was approaching, and it was approaching quickly. Our first instinct was to "act natural" and hope that they wouldn't notice us. Yeah, there's no way they would notice a fat, four-legged penguin walking down the street in the middle of August! As the vehicle got closer, we realized it was a jeep . . . full of shirtless guys. Peeking through the head hole in the costume, to our horror we recognized every single one of those guys. Just our luck, it was half of our town's hockey team. Now we were panicking. The jeep pulled to a stop beside us, and the guys were just like "Uh . . . hi . . .?" In fear of being recognized, we pulled up the penguin suit so our heads were no longer peeking out of the face-hole. Unfortunately, this move did two unfortunate things. One, I was wearing a dress and the costume pulled my dress up along with it, exposing my beautiful undergarments. How perfect! Two, it took away the last of our vision. The guys were yelling all sorts of things at us, and my friend and I were just like "RUN!"
So we ran. A fat, four-legged penguin booking it down the street screaming. We couldn't see where we were going, and we were just running blindly. The jeep went into reverse and the guys started following us as we tried to escape. Suddenly, we crashed into something and fell. We were all tangled up in some sort of obstacle and we couldn't see a thing. All we could hear were the guys yelling in confusion and taking photos and video on their cellphones. We sat there, our hearts beating madly with fear that the guys would get out of the jeep and find out our identities as we were struggling to free ourselves from the unknown obstacle. To our relief, the jeep drove away and we could hear its tires squeal off into the distance. We wasted no time. We ripped off the penguin suit and looked around at our surroundings. Turns out the "obstacle" was a very large pine tree in the middle of a random person's yard; we had run right into it and fell in amongst the branches. The second thing we noticed, was that the owner of the yard AND their entire family were standing in their living room window watching the entire escapade.
Now, the boys never did find out the identity of the two lunatics in the penguin suit, and no pictures or video ever surfaced on Facebook to our relief. I suppose that these guys were just as rattled by the situation as we were. I mean, it's not every day you see something like that on your drive through a deserted neighborhood! I'm curious as to what kind of story THEY tell people about that day. It's probably the same story as ours, except they're lacking the punchline.
Moral of the story, if you're ever playing a game of "Truth or Dare" you should probably make sure no penguin suits are involved.
The end.
-ocean10kv
