In front of a giant green screen with a ‘Classic Wrestling’ graphic on it, Scott Hunter stands stage-center rubbing his hands together.
‘Classic Wrestling, once again it’s me, probably the best wrestler in the entire world, or at least in the Southwest corner of Florida, Scott Hunter. This week I have the absolute utter delight to be facing off against one of my childhood heroes, Robert Bartholomew Dean.
I remember the first time I ever saw Bobby Dean. I was watching a pancake eating contest, and twenty-five rotund elephantine individuals were scarfing down as much sweet, fried buttery goodness as their fat little mouths could fit. And right there, wouldn’t you know it was Bobby Dean…
…laying on his stomach so that everyone could fit three tables and twenty-five people on his spongy back fat rolls.
Now I’ve heard tales of stories of the olden days when men would lay down their coats across a puddle for a lady, but I had never seen up close such a swinish, corpulent, porcine, avoirdupois lying himself down for people in my entire life, and he was right there!! You could just reach right out and touch him… so long as you don’t get too close to his mouth because his gnarled yellowish teeth were known to bite straight through a man’s arm, especially if you happened to be eating a jelly-filled donut at the time.
And as this hogs-bodied, portly, whalelike man was lying there on his stomach, absorbing sunlight into his brain through the blondest hair you’ve ever seen, a head so small it was often confused for a doorknob, I decided right then and there that if I could ever be half the man that this paunchy, thickset, excrement-wallowing pile of broken dreams and promises was, I would be a very happy man indeed.
But alas, I’m here today to formally admit that I’m not half the man that Bobby Bart Dean is. I’m more like one-one-hundredth the man he is. He’s not fat because it runs in the family. He’s fat because nobody runs in his family. And like the great philosopher, Forrest Gump’s mamma once said, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates. It ends sooner for Bobby Dean.’
I don’t really wanna pour it on too thick. Yes, he’s fat. Yes, he uses strawberry cream cheese as facial cream, but he’s a man with feelings, and every time someone calls him fat, he gets so depressed he cuts himself…
…another piece of cake.
So, everyone listening, understand one thing. Remember. Bobby Dean may be fat, may be dumb, may be uneducated, may be lacking in any workable skills, may look like an extra for the shrunken head scene in Beetlejuice, may appear in your bathroom mirror if you say ‘cheesecake’ three times, and he may look like Shamu’s fatter cousin…
…
…
…
So anyway, this week we fight, and I will defeat him just like I’ve defeated exactly 55.5% of the people I’ve had a match with, and because I’m very upset at losing to that island idiot, I will do it with class, I will do it with style, I will do it with ten large pizzas, which I will place in the corner to distract him. And then I’ll kick him in the face! He’ll never see it coming because I have also painted a picture of some delicious pie on the bottom of my shoes. O-M-G he’s gonna eat my boots!
So brilliant.
Sorry, porky, but when I get my hands on you this week… hibbida-hibbida-hibbida That’s all, folks!’
Scott nods then snaps to his trademark serious fist-raised pose.
End scene
Walking away from the set, he strolls past the connection between his mother’s living room where the green screen was, and into the kitchen. Scott Hunter’s mother, Euphegenia Hunter, has a selection of products around the kitchen island as she prepares a care package.
Scott frowns. ‘What’s all this?’
He looks at each, one by one, a tent-sized pair of tighty whities, seven pounds of butter, a VHS box set of the entire series of Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives, and insulin.
His mom smiles. ‘It’s a care package for your opponent!’
‘But I don’t care about my opponent,” he replies.
She holds up a scolding hand. ‘Mind your manners, son.’
‘Sorry. But I don’t care about my opponent, ma’am.’
She smiles.
‘That’s better.”
Finito.