Bemused

I just finished Maureen McCormick's autobiography. It's an exceptionally interesting, and quick, read. It's always amazing to me that you can "invest" yourself in a TV show and in a TV character and begin to feel like you know and like or even love him/her. You can spend hours and hours with a fictional person in the intimate space of your home, your bedroom, or your living room, and begin to feel like you actually have a stake in his/her life. It's not hard to understand how people with mild or moderate behavioral or mental problems can become obsessed with actors and actresses.
Don't go getting all worried on me. I'm not about to show up behind Hugh Laurie's house with a urine specimen jar or anything.
This book that Maureen writes is completely open and honest about her life, including everything from her years and years of cocaine addiction and drug abuse to her issues with depression to fighting with her brother for conservatorship of her father. I was just amazed at how much I didn't know about her. I'd always thought about her as the kid from the Brady Bunch and assumed she was just a "normal" person. (Well, as normal as Hollywood people can be, anyway.) You can never tell about people. Especially television people.
You know who else you can never tell about?
Mimes.
And clowns.
And people who walk around Disney World or other places in those giant animal costumes.
I had to do that once.
I worked at Focus on the Family for two summers when I was in college, in a soda shoppe called Whit's End in the welcome center. It serves food and drinks and maintains a 32 foot slide by making the kids put socks over their arms. (Please, just don't ask.) And part of the job required dressing up in this giant costume of Mr. Whittaker. He's a character who owns Whit's End in the radio (and now TV) series Adventures in Odyssey, a show for kids that Focus created. There were actually three costumes but I wasn't tall enough to be Eugene, the geeky teenager, and I was too tall to be the dog, whatever his name was.
Anyway. You had to have an escort with you when you were in costume in case some kid or teenager decided to attack you (which happened to the girl in the dog costume far more often that anyone else) and to help you put on and take off the giant head. The escort also had to make sure all the zippers and straps were done and that no parts of the real you were showing, and they had to steer you away from obstacles that you couldn't see. Unless, of course, your escort wanted to have a little fun with you. (And we were all great friends so this happened quite often.)
Because once the giant head was on you could only see through the black mesh screen that was Mr. Whittaker's mouth. And it wasn't very big. Or very see-through-able. And it was SO hot in there. Oh my GOSH. It was like Dante's Inferno. There was a place up at the top for an ice pack and a little fan that was supposed to blow the cool air from the ice down onto your head. Well half the time the fans weren't working but even when they were they didn't help. We also wore ice vests under the giant body suits but even they didn't work for too long. (Oh, and on a side note... Once those started to melt you had two enormous wet spots exactly over your boobs. Try going back to work the front counter looking like that and just see if you don't get creepy looks.)
One time I was in the suit and a woman handed me her baby so she could take a picture. I knew she had handed me the baby but I couldn't FEEL the baby at all. I had this huge body suit on, including a big round belly made of PVC pipe, huge gloves, a giant head, friggin' enormous shoes, I can barely see anything and I'm just praying that I can hold the baby long enough for her to take the picture.
I was NOT smiling when she told me to say cheese.
So see?
It just goes to show.
Either the Brady Bunch, clowns, or a giant Mr. Whittaker holding a baby, you just don't know about people.