A lady on the radio today called in and told a story we'll entitle, 'I went to jail for Tickle-me Elmo'.
Apparently during the initial craze related to the fuzzy toy, she was with her husband who was in the Army and stationed at a base in Germany. One of the husbands of a friend called and told her that a plane had come in on the flightline and it had Tickle-me Elmos on it. Well, several of the Army wives--you just know the story's going to go bad from that alone--went down to meet the plane and tried to convince the guy there to either give or sell them one of the dolls, without luck. At one point, one of the women (not the one telling the story) said something like, 'well, how about I kick your butt and you give me the Elmo'. The next thing they knew, the MPs were called and they were all taken to jail for communicating a threat and loitering.
When asked how her husband took this, the lady said it was definitely not well. He was an MP himself, for one, and was really embarrassed. Plus, he was up for a promotion and they not only did not promote him as a result, they cited him for failure to control his dependents. He did eventually get the promotion the next year. Any fight they had after that the Elmo incident was brought up. They eventually divorced. The Elmo made it into their divorce papers, as he cited it as an example of her lack of control. She may be the only person on the planet where Tickle-Me Elmo played a role in her divorce. (Mind you, I understand why the husband was upset, losing a promotion over a doll, but as the radio hosts said, sometimes you have to let it go.)
Well, she's married again, this time to an Air Force man. Here's hoping she'll stay under the radar of the SPs there. :) Who knew a doll could cause this much trouble? And it just illustrates what I mean when I say the world I grew up in (the military) is a whole other world from what outsiders experience.
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