Saturday, November 6, 2010

Overhead in the Haunted House (Charming Customer Awards)

My creation

This past October, I worked in a Haunted House as a living statue. I was dressed as an angel standing next to a mausoleum, & whenever somebody would walk by I would jump at them.

For the most part, the customers were fun to scare and ladeled on enthusiastic praise. Everybody was having a good time, until the line started to stall. At that point, the name-calling and stupid jokes began.

To be sure, I felt badly for the customers: they paid their $20 & they were standing in line, bored. However, true cowardice is taunting somebody who cannot respond. Here are just a few of the observational gems I recieved over the course of the weeks:

-"You can tell it's cold, man!!! Check her out."
(I wear at least 3 shirts on any given day.)

-"Haha, you should go out in the sun a little more! You're looking pretty pale."
(Yes, okay. Let's have a conersation right now about my white makeup, you clever fuckwit.)

-"Don't hang yourself!"
(I am standing in a graveyard. I am not near any rope of any kind.)

-"Don't you have anything better to do?"

-"You are doing a very good imitation of a person who could be scary, but isn't."

-"Hey Angel, go to hell!"

***

However, all of my coworkers were fabulously polite and interesting people, and the director and his wife were the kinds of people I wanted to have as my new best friends. The actors would all talk and joke for the hours we had before going outside, and some of us even got a little silly.