One Reason People Dislike Mimes

In the spring of our freshman year, Spudwhip and I went through a little phase of being mimes. One afternoon after classes, we put on our mime get-up and wandered around campus, goofing with people. Then we decided to go out into the real world - read: off-campus - and goof with people out there. Our plan, actually, was to go to the bank in downtown Tacoma where our friend worked as a teller and mess with him. Denver D must have agreed to drive us, since he had a vehicle and we didn't.


Just before we walked into the bank, we ran into a staff person we knew from the university, who kindly put up with our antics (while Denver D took pictures. Inside the bank, we did not immediately see our friend. His bank had a fiberglass barrier between the tellers and the customers, which I had not seen before.


Needless to say we did not get to fool with him very much, and only partly because of the fiberglass barrier. Of course, since we couldn't speak, there wasn't much we could do in the bank anyway. Because everyone else we knew worked on campus, we didn't realize that he had a "real job" and had to "really work." We also underestimated how busy the bank would be - in the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, we didn't think there would be any customers in the bank. We made our exit after only a few minutes.


Over dinner that evening, our friend told us that we had made everyone very nervous. Because we were in whiteface, some of the staff, including the security guard, thought our intention was to hold up the bank. He said he couldn't interact with us very much because he was working, but also because he wanted us to leave so his coworkers could relax. He didn't say so, but we probably also really embarrassed him.


The next time we put on whiteface, a few days later, we'd been asked to act as clowns at an auction to benefit the university's Alumni Fund. After dinner when the auction started and we were free to leave, Spudwhip swept up a bottle of wine from the table and we played at serving wine as we moved toward the back exit.


We drank the wine that night. With all of the things I have forgotten, I still remember that it was a Covey Run Chardonnay, my first Washington State wine.