If this is any indication of how this year is going to shape up, it’s going to be one Hello Kitty Hellish 365 days.
Now that we’re back in the US, my wife is dutifully trying to Hello Kittify our new place like in Japan. To keep my sanity, I try to take off each day to an Internet cafe to get work done. One would think that I would be safe now that I am not in the land of the evil feline, but that would be greatly underestimating Hello Kitty’s will to make my life hell.
I now know that I should never, ever check this blog in public. There were some notices in my email that a number of comments needed to be moderated, so I headed over to this blog to approve them. If I had only known what would happen next.
As the blog came up on the screen, the woman next to me must have glanced over to see it.
Woman: “Oh, I love that blog!”
Me: Instantly knowing this wasn’t going to be good when I looked to see a variety of Hello Kitty crap among her possessions. I forced a smile and remained silent hoping against hope that she would leave the conversation at that, ignoring the universal truth that if a person is a Hello Kitty fanatic, there is no shutting them up once the topic turns to Hello Kitty.
Woman: “I didn’t know guys like to look for Hello Kitty stuff too. Are you looking to get something for your wife? I love looking for new stuff there.”
Me: “Well, not exactly…” (thinking: “Seriously, this can’t be happening to me.”)
Woman: “Oh, you should buy your wife Hello Kitty jewelry. She’ll LOVE (repeated 3 times) IT! See, I have this necklace…” and the woman begins to go through and explain about all the Hello Kitty items she owns.
Me: (Thinking: “you have got to be kidding me…”) as I interrupt her, not really thinking what might happen because all I want to do is get this woman to stop talking about Hello Kitty. “Look, I am the guy that writes this blog, and…”
Woman” “OMG! OMG! OMG!”
Me: (Thinking: “oh crap, what have I just done?”)
Woman: Starts excitedly talking a million miles a minute so that nothing is comprehensible except for the final sentence which is, “your wife is my hero.” She then takes something out of her purse, hands it to me and says, “I want your wife to have this.”
Me: (Thinking: “this can’t be happening…) Thanks, but there is no need to do that.”
Woman: “No, I insist. I love your wife.”
Me: (Thinking: “under no circumstances should I ever let this woman and my wife meet if I want to keep my sanity…) “No, really, it’s not necessary…”
Woman: “Your wife will love it! You have to give it to her from me.”
Me: “Seriously, there is no need…”
Woman: Interrupting me mid sentence. “You have to promise to give it to her.”
Me: “Well…”
Woman: “There are no buts about it. It’s settled. You promise to give it to her, right?”
Me: “Seriously, she doesn’t need it. Have you ever read my blog? She has more…”
Woman: interrupts mid sentence again. “Oh, I LOVE (repeated 3 times again) your blog” and then goes into her undecipherable, mile a minute blabber about all the things she likes on the blog.”
Me: (wondering: “what is the worst of these two evils – having to listen to this woman blather for the next half hour about Hello Kitty or taking the thing for my wife and getting out of there asap.”) “Fine, fine,” I said grabbing the Hello Kitty face carabiner key chain and getting the hell out of there as quickly as I possibly could:
So now I have this and there is no possible way I’m going to give it to my wife because if I do, she’ll insist on meeting this woman and that would certainly produce unimaginable ripples in the very fabric of life as we know it. So I will instead give it away.
The contest is simple and should give Hello Kitty fanatics a fun dilemma to try and overcome. Simply leave a comment in this post listing 3 or more reasons why you hate Hello Kitty. Any comment which has anything positive to say about Hello Kitty will be disqualified.
I will have a random number generated for the comments that qualify left below. The person’s comment that matches the number will receive the Hello Kitty face carabiner.
The contest starts now and will end at 11:59 pm eastern (10:59 pm central, 9:59 pm mountain and 8:59 pm pacific) on Tuesday January 12th. Open to anyone living anywhere in the world including my wife (oh, how I would love to see her list three reasons she hates Hello Kitty).
Update: There were 181 entries in this contest and the random number came out 20 – contragatualtions to Yasmin for being the winner: