And you say I’m the dummy? LOL!
Not the teacher from Punky Brewster, you racist.
In 1997, I became obsessed with truck drivers blowing their horns whenever I would make a fist pumping action. The problem is, as I got older they were less inclined to do it because they probably thought I was some teenage hipster doing it ironically or something.
Kenny disappeared shortly after this picture was taken. His remains have never been found.
At about this same time, I met Kenny. Kenny’s official name is “Resusci-Juinor, CPR practice manikin,” and he cost about 800 bucks. Of course, he only costs that if you don’t steal him from your high school, like I did. As a bonus, mine came already wearing clothes because my prudish school district was uncomfortable with the idea of teenagers locking lips with young boys unless they were wearing pants, but considering he had the collected residue of 3000+ high school students’ halitosis in him, the fact that he was wearing clothing, wasn’t that much of a selling point. If you’re going to buy one of these things, I definitely recommend buying new.
Anyway, that didn’t matter to me because I wasn’t planning on kissing him or practicing my CPR. I was planning on parking him in the backseat of my car and hooking up a pulley system so that he would make the fist pumping action required to get truck drivers to blow their horn because he looks just like an 8 year old boy and you know that no truck driver can resist an 8 year old boy.
When I was done building my contraption, I couldn’t wait to get on the road. That first day, I drove up and down I 84 for six hours, truck drivers blowing their horns at me and Kenny the whole time!
Predictably, this got old. Maybe I had grown up too much and had outgrown these childish shenanigans. Still, I took pleasure in knowing that I had fooled so many people.
So this was boring as shit and now I was probably going to have to go to jail if anybody found out about Kenny, so I set about thinking up a new plan.
One time during my brief honeymoon with this particular brand of mischief, a truck driver had honked his horn for me and then I think he figured out out that Kenny wasn’t a real boy and he got pissed off. And when I say pissed off, I mean he flew into a rage and tried to drive me off of the road. So instantly the passion returned to Kenny and I’s relationship.
The problem was, out of maybe 500 times I did this, I was only busted that once. I needed something to make it obvious. So I made a big sign on my back bumper that said “ha ha, I tricked you and got you to honk your horn and you didn’t know that wasn’t a kid, that was just a dummy!”
I guess a lot of truckers have anger issues or they are hopped up on speed or whatever, because they didn’t like being tricked. Most of them would shake their fists at me. Some of them would try to ride my tail, but some of them genuinely tried to kill me, just like the first guy.
I don’t know why or how I could even be surprised at the things that were about to happen, but somehow I always was. The pattern was clear enough: I would see a weakness and then exploit it and take it way too far until things played out on their own towards a logical conclusion.
I chased that feeling that I got from making an ass out of somebody, them trying to kill me and the subsequent rush that I felt upon escaping death, coming closer and closer to the razor’s edge. My lust for danger and excitement seemingly knew no bounds. Until that day a group of overzealous truck drivers banded together to take out their revenge on me, of course. In the midst of their bloodlust, one of them overshot the divider while swerving to hit my car and subsequently jackknifed his rig, spilling a truckload of rotten onions across the freeway, locking down traffic for hours and triggering a statewide manhunt for the mystery car who got unfairly blamed for all the trouble.
A vicious pack of coyotes ate all the onions.
The mystery car that then got painted a garish shade of yellow and sold for cash to a guy three states over, that is. A car whose driver is still wanted on criminal mischief charges.
Surprise! It’s me! I did it! But unfortunately for them, there’s nothing the cops can do about it because the statute of limitations on that type of thing expired exactly three days ago, according to my lawyer, Moishe Rosenberg!
Still undefeated!
Eric Filipkowski 
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