… on ice bucket challenges and leftover puppy rage
September 01, 2014
So unless you have been hiding under a rock (and if you have, you may have seen me there as hiding under rocks is one of my favorite pastimes) then you are aware of this social media monster called the ‘Ice Bucket Challenge’.
I am forever wondering, when it comes to such things, what the corporate brainstorming sessions must have been like. The meetings that were had to come up with such a unique and … refreshing… idea.
Corporate-Professional-Number-One: You know, we made about two million dollars in contributions for the summer push last year, what can we do this year to make… oh, I dunno… a hundred million dollars?
Corporate-Professional-Number-Two: I was thinking a great new mailing. We could put cute pictures of puppies cuddling with patients and have a really nice tear-off card that people could fill out and send back their pledges…
Corporate-Professional-Number-Three: Yes! And we should put our online address on it!
New-Summer-College-Intern (looks up from checking her Tweets): It’s a website address.
Corporate-Professional-Number-Three: Right! A website address! Good. Intern, can you send me an internet on that?
New-Summer-College-Intern: (sighs) Sure.
Corporate-Professional-Number-One: So it’s decided then. A new brochure to tug at the heart-strings. Puppies and stuff. And our online…er… website address. Good! All in favor?
New-Summer-College-Intern (shyly): Wait. Like, have you guys ever thought of taking advantage of social media?
crickets.
New-Summer-College-Intern: Like, of Twitter and Facebook at least?
crickets.
Corporate-Professional-Number-Two: My granddaughter has a Facebook, I think…
New-Summer-College-Intern (picks up phone and her thumbs start flying): Facebook currently has 1.28 billion users. With Twitter’s 200 million, that would give you a great audience, right?
Corporate-Professional-Number-Three: Great! So we will mail our brochures to the Facebook and Chirper people. Someone get Carl from Marketing in here, we are going to need…. (grabs calculator)… 1.48 billion more brochures printed, pronto!
New-Summer-College-Intern: No, no. That’s not what I mean…
Corporate-Professional-Number-Two: All in color?
Corporate-Professional-Number-One: No, that will cost a fortune!
New-Summer-College-Intern: Groan.
Corporate-Professional-Number-Three: Maybe in black and white? I mean, that would add emotion to the mailers…
Corporate-Professional-Number-One: Do you think we can get a break on the postage?
New-Summer-College-Intern: Wait! Guys! …
Corporate-Professional-Number-Two: Maybe we should call the newspapers to announce this campaign, maybe they will put an article about us using Facebook and Twitter!
Corporate-Professional-Number-Three: Wait? Twitter? I though it was ‘Chirper’… (grabs pencil and begins erasing something in his notes).
New-Summer-College-Intern pauses, picks up jaw off the floor, grabs the pitcher of ice water nearest to her, and, in frustration, dumps it over her head.
Corporate-Professional-Number-One, Corporate-Professional-Number-Two, Corporate-Professional-Number-Three, and all other junior ‘yes-folks’ in the room stop short.
crickets again.
Corporate-Professional-Number-One: Well that certainly got our attention….
Corporate-Professional-Number-Two (after a brief pause): You know….
I can absolutely see it.
I’m pretty sure it actually happened.
Why?
Because, in my corporate career, I invented the ice bucket challenge.
And was on the verge of doing it often…
Nearly.
every.
damned.
day.
And, yes, I actually had a senior exec once ask a colleague of mine to ‘send me an internet on that’.
Never forgot it.
Oh, but anyway, the Ice Bucket Challenge!
So Mac and Jack had been talking about needing to do it all weekend, and yesterday morning was ‘the time’! So they filled up their ice buckets and we headed outside so they could film themselves ‘dumping’ and later go and post the video on Facebook.
Me? Oh I was nominated.
I did ‘The Check-Writing Part’ (cuz you can write a check to ALS and get out of dumping ice cold water on yourself before breakfast).
But then Mac nominated Marshal Dillon Dingle.
Which, yesterday in particular, I thought was a fabulous idea.
Now, before you get all “Hey, leave the dog out of it” and call the Humane Society on me, I am telling you that maybe one Marshal Dillon Dingle deserved to be ice bucketed yesterday.
Yes he did.
What?
Oh, like why?
Well, let’s say he did something bad.
Like, oh I dunno, let’s say – as a result of leftover rage from me spending time with a certain puppy in Maine – he stole the neck pillow that we use on airplanes and roped someone else into helping him shred it and leave its remnants all over the house?
How about that?
Would that mean that he should be forced to do the Ice Bucket Challenge?
Oh, I think it would.
But just in case you do call the Humane Society on me, I think I will purposefully print the photographic proof of what he did right here!
What I found when I woke up:
What I saw next after I exclaimed, ‘What the fuh!’:
And then all this happened:
Which, according to my brain, made this reasonable:
And I’m a little bummed because the little bastard just seemed to enjoy it…
And I know he enjoyed it because right after that, he just ran around leaping and dancing for joy because he got to play with water!
And me?
I was relegated to the kitchen, picking up little pieces of brown fluff for the rest of the freakin’ morning.
Thanks for readin’.
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