About a year and a half ago when I decided to purchase a hot dog suit as my Halloween costume,  I wasn’t exactly thinking that it would change my life forever.

Not only did my friends absolutely love the hot dog get up, especially with me in it, my mother fell in love with it too. It was like she gave birth to a third child the day I showed up at her house dressed as a wiener.

The crazy woman even set up a Facebook fan page and decided to rename me Von Wiener…and people actually joined the page!!! I began to get the feeling that I was going to start being exploited by this dear, sweet woman who had birthed me many, many years ago and unfortunately I was right.

Five months after purchasing the hot dog suit, my mother called and asked if I would march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade with her Community Board. Unfortunately I jumped at the opportunity and agreed to march before knowing all of the facts. One fact being that I had to go dressed as THE Von Wiener. The second fact was that I had to be nice to the children on the side lines and go over and shake their germ infested tiny little hands. Disgusting! None of this sounded kosher! But even though I felt like my creator had pulled the wool over my eyes, I am a wiener of my word so I prepared to march!

Now, the St. Patrick’s Day parade in my hometown, Staten Island, is one of the biggest, craziest events of the year. Everyone and their mother, cousins, aunts, uncles and friends pack themselves like drunken sardines onto Forest Avenue and watch the parade go by while cheering and hollering all sorts of stupid things. Perfect, just what I needed right? Wrong!

I got to the parade about five minutes after it began. My mother and her group had already left the starting point and now I had to find them. To save myself from any harassment from drunken people wondering why a hot dog was running around like a complete asshole, I decided to carry my costume in my arms until I found the group. Unfortunately I found them quickly. As I ran to them, dressed as a gentile, my mother shot a look at me with such disgust in her eyes and didn’t even have to ask me why I wasn’t wearing my alter ego because the question was written all over her face. I quickly threw the frankfurter  suit over my head, put my arms through and snapped up the back and began to march and within three seconds the ridiculous taunting started. “HOT DOG HOT DOG!, was what the children were screaming. A few rugrats even topped their rants with, “I’m gonna eat you hot dog!” At that moment I began to feel like one of those little girls on Toddlers in Tiaras that are paraded around on stage in baby hooker costumes by their mommy’s except I’m in my thirties, marching down a parade route dressed as a hot dog with relish and mustard. I was not happy at all and you could tell. Being in a bar drunk dressed as a hot dog is totally different than marching down a public street in broad daylight stone cold sober.

I felt like my world was ending. People were going to see me and make fun but then it happened………..

As I was walking with my arms folded, dragging my feet I caught an amazing site out of the corner of my eye. It was a human Heineken bottle walking on the sidewalk with its friends while spraying silly string all over innocent parade goers!! My face immediately lit up and I turned and ran toward it yelling, “Heineken, Heineken!”

If you close your eyes real tight and imagine one of those typical love scenes in a movie when a couple is running toward each other in slow motion, in a field full of beautiful flowers with arms wide open, you can then open your eyes because that’s not what it looked like at all. Picture a 5’10 hot dog tripping over parade barriers and her size 10 feet while a giant, drunk Heineken runs through an intoxicated crowd, shoving and pushing, with both of their arms flailing in the air until getting trapped behind each side of the same barriers that caused a problem for hot dog while trying to connect with her make believe soul mate. But a few metal barriers were not going to stop these two morons from meeting. Heineken leaned over the blockade and grabbed me.  My mother, whose facial expression, resembled one you would have if you saw Jesus Christ walking through a shopping mall, snapped a photo with her cell phone and then dragged me back to reality without us ever getting to find out the beers real name. What a bitch!

The next day while I was sitting at my desk at work I received a phone call from a friend. The photo that my mother took of me and Heiney (yeah I nicknamed him..and??) was online and currently in a photo contest for the most parade spirit! I was TOTALLY being exploited now! Was this woman nuts? She actually uploaded the photo to our local newspaper and now I am in a contest with an old man, a dog, two ugly babies and a leprechaun!!?? The photo of us even wound up on the front page of the paper! I was not going to be embarrassed alone! I needed to find this human beer bottle fast so I did the most logical thing any idiot in my shoes would do, I put a Missed Encounters ad on Craigslist.
The ad didn’t find my beer but it did fall into the hands of the one person I would hope wouldn’t, a reporter for the same paper my photo was in. Now I have a picture in the paper and my name and Missed Encounters ad in it as well because we all know what reporters do, report. That’s just what he did. A nice write up was put online informing everyone that a thirty year old asshole that dresses up as a hot dog was in search of another asshole that dresses up as a beer.

http://blog.silive.com/staten_island_connects/2010/03/can_you_help_a_hot_dog_girl_find_her_beer_boy.html

Whatever! I never found the Heineken but we did win the photo contest and made it to the front page of the paper again that following week. After that someone  told me they knew who the green beer bottle was and I looked him up on Facebook. I did find a name match and even wrote the guy but later found out it couldn’t have been him because this guy was in prison during the time of the parade. Nice!
Fast forward a whole twelve months and guess who gets me to promise to march in the parade again! The same lady who kept exploiting me the year before. This time I insisted on being the Hamburger Helper Hand but my mother wasn’t having any of that. Yet again she won the fight and there I was, yet again, marching down Forest Avenue dressed as a god damn hot dog!
History basically repeated itself because I was not happy, I refused to come into contact with any germ infested children, those miniature germ carriers yelled the same things at me as the year before and again, I was stone cold sober. Oh wait, it was a bit different this time because it was POURING rain outside! It was like I was stuck in a bad afterschool special but on a Sunday. I was pissed.

Then out of the corner of my eye I saw an amazing sight! A giant green beer bottle walking on the sidewalk yelling and carrying on, it was Heineken!!!!!! I started screaming its brand name as I ran toward the barriers just like I did the year before. Heineken heard me and ran my way. He then reached over the dull, wet, cold metal railing and hugged me. It was glorious! A friend of mine snapped a new picture and this time I even got his name.

It was the same name that I had searched for on Facebook but he said to look again because he was never, ever  in prison. When I got home I did just that and found the true Heineken’s personal Facebook page. I friended him, he accepted and now we are real life cyber friends who are also in that same photo contest again and may even win again!

http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2011/03/poll_who_had_the_most_st_patri.html

So you see children, fairy tales really do come true…even when you’re sober and dressed as a ridiculous wiener.

The End.