The Day I Became the Baddest Dude on the Planet

I know what I look like, I’m not oblivious to that. On the contrary, I have always been very aware of my size and appearance, and I have always tried to be overly polite to offset that. For those who don’t know me personally, I am 6‘8” and I weigh in the neighborhood of 340lbs. If you didn’t know me and I wasn’t smiling, I could see how some might take me as intimidating. The fact that I have a shaved head and a goatee doesn’t really help my case.  I’m like a Great Dane that thinks he’s a lapdog. I’m big, I take up a lot of space, I bump into door frames and knock things over or break things. Most days I’m pretty low key about it, because, well it’s just me. It’s who I am and who I have always been. Then there are some days where I can get a bit full of myself. This is about one of “those” days.

It was summertime in Vegas, where I lived at the time. My go to ensemble was basketball shorts, a tee shirt, and my Air Force 1’s. Now I have been in retail most of my career, if I noticed me, I would make sure that I wasn’t up to no good. Like I said, I know what I look like.

To give you a visual, a few years ago here in North Carolina, I was standing in the doorway talking to my wife who was just outside in the front yard. All of the sudden she gets this really weird look on her face and looks at me a bit more intently. I asked her what was wrong. She said, “You are literally the size of a door, top to bottom, left to right, you are a door.” I said that I prefer to be referred to as a wall, but I would take a door.

Now back to Vegas, I’m rockin’ my go to wardrobe, and I had been out and about most of the day. I’ve been told before that when I walk, it’s more of a saunter than anything.  So let’s just say that I was sauntering up the Target parking lot. I have no idea what I was looking for. If I’m being honest, it was most likely the toy section looking for a Pop Hero that I needed to add to my collection. I saunter in, I grab some nachos and a drink, eat it at the little café area and then use the restroom before I go looking around the store.

As I am sauntering around, I notice the employees “paying attention” to me. Nothing new here, I continue on with my saunter. The further I walk into Target the more the employees are hawking me. Like, they’re not even being kind of discrete. Usually they try to conceal their observations by hiding around a corner or behind a display to be kind of covert about it. This was blatant and the longer I’m in there, the more employees I see. Now from personal experience I would only be this blatant if I KNEW the person was a threat or had stolen before. You don’t act this obvious with suspicion. Well I think that I figured out what it was.

Clearly… I am a bad dude! Clearly they think that I am a threat. As I come to this realization my saunter turns into a strut. I am walking with confidence. My shoulders are back, my chest is out. I feel powerful. And around every corner there is another Target employee. Just waiting for me to walk by. They were on their Walkie Talkies talking to each other, they were coordinating. They knew the direction that I was going and they had someone waiting there. Am I the baddest dude on the planet? I sure felt that way. I continued to strut down the main aisle making my way around the store. Every time I saw a new employee I would look them right in the eyes and give them the “What’s up?” head nod.  “Yeah… they don’t want none of this!” I am an “all hands on deck” level threat. I am the baddest dude alive!

Then I felt it… The lightest of touches. The softest brush against my skin. Right… across… my… calf. “What the heck was that?!?!?”

Let’s back up a bit… before the strutting, before the puffed chest, before the squared shoulders, before I morphed into the Bad Muther******!!! I was hungry, so like I said, I grabbed some nachos and a drink. I wasn’t in a hurry, so I sat in the little café. I needed to use the restroom, so I went to the restroom. I needed to “take my time”, so I found a stall. There were no toilet seat covers, so I… FOLDED TOILET PAPER AN MADE MY OWN BARRIER. 

Do you know how much toilet paper it takes to go from the inside of your basketball shorts, up to the waist band, and back down… to your calf… when you are six foot eight?!?!?! Well let me tell you, a whole heck of a lot!!!!

Now the last few minutes played back to me in my mind. In slow motion. Yeah, they were watching me. Not because I’m a “tough looking guy”, not because I’m a “threat”, not because they were worried I might steal something, not because they were concerned with public safety! They were “watching” me because I was a jackass that was walking around with a line of toilet paper down to his calf. Who became a jackass who started to STRUT, with a lonnnnng piece of toilet paper hanging out of his shorts. Who, looked them in the eyes. And with all of the confidence in the world. Gave them the “What’s up?” head nod with a smartass smirk on his face. They weren’t scared of me… they were laughing at me, and rightfully so. For real though, it had to have been like 2 ½ feet of toilet paper. Can you imagine what was going through their minds? “Why does he need so much toilet paper?” “What is wrong with this guy?”

So, I grabbed the toilet paper turned 50 shades of red, crumpled it up and started looking for the shortest route out of Target. The best part though, the absolute BEST part, was the look of utter defeat when a different employee found me and realized; that I realized.

The amount of pure, unadulterated humility that I got smacked in the face with on that hot summer day is still felt today. Yeah I don’t strut anymore. Now, anytime I start to feel those shoulders pushing back, that chest starting to swell, when I’m getting REAL full of myself, I think, “Calm down toilet paper boy! You ain’t all that!”