Monday, October 18, 2010

Stories of Jeff Excell - Shooting at Hitler

I love dressing up for Halloween. I love coming up with fun, clever costumes. I have been Sonic the Hedgehog, a Doublemint Twin, and I have never been more proud of a costume idea than my sophomore year when Kenz and I were shooting stars.
It was the week before Halloween. We had our gigantic cardboard stars on, glitter on our lashes, and fully loaded Nerf guns. We sparkled right on over to the Halloween Institute activity where we met up with Tanner and his friends. One of these friends said he wanted to dress up as something scary. He chose Hitler. Some felt this was slightly inappropriate, but everyone agreed it was scary.

There was a catwalk set up for people to show off their costumes and win awards. When they began beckoning contestants for "scariest costume," Hitler made his move. He was determined to persuade the judging panel his costume was award worthy.

As he was practicing his catwalk, the rest of the group was devising a plan to help ease the awkwardness that would fall upon the gym as Hitler walked the runway. In no time, his name was announced and he was strutting his Hitler stuff. He got to the end of the catwalk and waited for something. An applause? No. Boos? Not at an institute event. Nerf bullets? Yes. Kenz and I swooped in to provide Hitler with  comic relief as we exhausted all our bullets on him the moment he stepped within range.

Laughter and smiles replaced the horror and shock. Hitler made his exit.

We had already shown off our costumes, so I wasn't too concerned about my Nerf bullets being swallowed up in the costumed crowd. I didn't mind sparing a few bullets to save our friend from being the center of all institute awkwardness that night. (That's saying something, because institute is known for its awkwardness.) Hitler returned and finally expressed to us that maybe Hitler wasn't the best costume choice. Especially because he didn't win the award...Satan did.

We wandered through the crowd to see if we could find any more people we knew before we left to eat dinner. Within minutes of our crowd weaving, we found perhaps just who we were looking for -- a costumeless Jeff Excell holding six Nerf bullets.
"I picked these up for you," He said as he handed them over.
I was caught completely off guard. I had barely given those bullets a second thought after I shot them at the unawarded scariest costume.

A few words were exchanged, but our group pulled us away because they were getting hungry. We weren't about to upset certain members of our group, so we said goodbye to Jeff.

We made it to the restaurant. The institute dance was comfortable compared to the feeling of walking into "The Pizza Factory" with Hitler when it wasn't officially Halloween. We should have also devised a plan for easing that awkwardness. Despite my unease about walking in with an inappropriately dressed friend, I did find comfort in the fact that I had a fully-loaded gun.

**I just got permission from my friend who was dressed as Hitler to link to his blog where he also happens to have a post about this night...with a picture. Go to his Halloween post by clicking HERE.**

2 comments:

Kim said...

Where's the picture of Hitler?

Kenzman said...

I'm laughing so hard right now. hahahahaha.... Satan did win huh? And I love that jeff picked up our bullets. I also love that we shot Hitler down at the appropriate moment. I love us. And Jeff.