Blogger 365 Day 78 - When pranks go wrong

     Earlier this year, during one of my trips to the bank for work, I was inside doing deposits for one of the stores, talking to the teller Denise as I did so.  Sammy was with me and as the three of us were talking I had made mention of the little Pittsburgh Penguins gnomes next to both Denise's and Gillian's teller windows.  Gillian wasn't there that day, I think she was sick (I could be mistaken though) and I said, you know what would be cool, stealing Gillian's gnome and then taking him around Pittsburgh and taking pictures of all of the places he goes.  We all got a good laugh out of it, but I did not end up taking the gnome, I know Gillian but not well enough to be absconding with her personal property, so Sammy and I left the bank and walked back to work, joking more about what could be done with the gnome.

     The next time I did see Gillian at the bank I told her about our conversation and jibed her a little bit, saying that she is lucky her gnome is still there.  Apparently she was cool with the idea, because on subsequent trips to the bank she said I should take the gnome with me.  Of course the whole idea behind the joke is not to do it at someone's prodding, but rather for it to be a surprise and then just have the pictures pop up on Facebook (Gillian and I are friends there) with the gnome at different places in and around the city.  I had all kinds of neat ideas including taking a picture of the gnome and putting it on an Amber alert picture, or taking him to some unused railroad tracks with a picture of him "tied" to the tracks, waiting on his own personal Dudley Doright to save him.  I just left the possibilities ruminate in my head, all the while wondering when I would have the opportunity and the time to take the gnome, because if I was going to pull off this prank it was going to take some time to put together all of the pictures and visit multiple locations throughout the city.  If there is one thing that is not part of my schedule these days it is ample time, I would need a window of some sort in order to pull off everything I needed to do. 

      Two weeks ago I am again at the bank (I am there almost every day) and again I am talking to Denise and she says that both her and Gillian will be off the following week Wednesday through Friday because they had to go to some training course for their jobs.  My mind of course starting racing, if I have Wednesday through Friday to work with and the bank is closed on Saturday and Sunday then I would have a full week to pull this prank off.  Even better is the fact I was getting paid on Wednesday, so the possible places I could go with the gnome were quite numerous.

      So last Wednesday I get into the bank, I am doing the store deposit again, talking to Ashley (who also was aware of this prank) and I go ahead and grab the gnome.  My first though as I am going back to work with the gnome in my backpack is the first place I could take the gnome would be the casino, because then I could get pictures of the gnome on the subway to the casino, sitting at different table games or slot machines throughout the casino and even take him upstairs and get pictures of him at the Grandview Buffet.  

     I get off of work and walk over to the subway station, and after waiting for about 10 minutes a subway comes rolling along, so I board one of the rearmost cars so fewer people can see what I am doing, then I take the gnome out of my bag and snap a picture of him sitting on one of the subway seats.  So far the plan is going swimmingly.

      I get to the casino and am about to go inside and the security guards ask what is in my bag.  I open it for them and tell them what I have, my laptop from work and my iPad and my lucky gnome.  No issues, I get waved right through.  I proceed to play some games, losing money along the way when I decide I will pick a remote slot machine and get a picture of the gnome in front of one of the machines.  I didn't want to be out in the open about it, because I know many businesses have issues with people taking pictures inside their establishments, including the gaming floors of casinos.  But it is a Wednesday afternoon/early evening and the casino isn't too packed and I am able to sneak off to a desolate bank of nickel slot machines and I set the gnome up right next to the spinning wheels and quickly grab the trusty iPad and fire off another quick picture. 

     After spending way too much money I decide that I better head upstairs to the buffet, for both the next picture and for my dinner before the buffet closes.  I get in about an hour before the buffet closes, plenty of time for me to sample a little bit of everything they have, I am noshing on Mongolian beef, grilled chicken breast, mac and cheese, egg drop soup, cheese ravioli, baked potato, etc.  It would not be a stretch to said I pigged out.  I was seated right next to an aisle, so I had a wooden divider between me and the whole next section of the dining room, so I grabbed the gnome again and put him on the divider and clicked off another picture.  The plan is coming along flawlessly, and this is only the first day I have four more days to do this stuff.

     I finish eating and decide I better leave the casino while I still had some money.  I had a fun night gambling and pranking (though only I knew about the prank at that point) and figured I better get home because I did have to work Thursday morning after all.  I head outside and I notice that it has gotten much colder since I went in, the wind is blowing and snow flakes are falling.  Nothing along the lines of accumulation, the snowflakes were just visual proof of how cold it was getting.

     I get back to the subway station to make my way back into the city and then transfer to a bus back to Oakland.  As I am at the station I am thinking, you know, if I could get a picture of the gnome here, that would be cool and it would give me something to do while I wait.  So I am thinking, how do I want to stage this photo and I see a garbage can on the platform and if I situate this picture right I can get the gnome with the Allegheny Station sign in the background, so I set the gnome up on the can and take a few paces back and start to get into position to make the shot happen when I gust of wind blows across the station.  Everything just moved in slow motion as I am watching the gnome fall off of his perch and onto the floor of the station.  Even as he is falling I am thinking to myself that while I can't catch him, at least he isn't ceramic (it was some resin polymer thing) so maybe it will not be that bad.  Then he hits the ground and what happened to him is what would have happened to Joe Theismann if when Lawrence Taylor hit him on Monday Night Football Joe's leg would have been made of some resin polymer thing, the legs and the bottom half of the gnome just shatter.

     Talk about a major buzz kill, I went from being all happy and foolish to distraught in seconds.  The gnome had been in my possession all of maybe 7 hours and already I had broke it.  I had no idea what to do, I wouldn't see Gillian until Monday, so if I could find a place and buy another one I could just replace it.  But I had doubles at work on Thursday and Friday and the St Patrick's Day parade on Saturday so I couldn't even get to a store to try and find a new one until Sunday at the earliest.  Not sure of what to do, I went and picked up the biggest pieces of the gnome I could get my hands on (there were plenty of little shards of gnome on the station floor as well)  and put it in my bag and came home, not sure of what I would do next.

     I got home around 10pm, and I am just sitting here and I decide that maybe I could call up Google on my computer and find places around here that sell Penguin gnomes.  So I type in Pittsburgh Penguin gnome in the search bar and hundreds of hits came up.  I start looking at links and none of these are the gnome I am seeking. So I try a image search, see if that will help.  I see all different types of gnomes, I had no idea there were than many Penguin gnomes out there, but if I was going to replace the gnome I should probably get the one I broke, not just any old gnome, so I am looking at pictures of gnomes, trying to compare the pictures to the parts of the gnome that are in my bag.  I am having some luck, but I can't remember what all the gnome had, he was holding something in his right hand but that apparently broke off when he fell and I don't know what it was.  Was it a wand, a hockey stick, what was there?  I didn't want to get the wrong gnome after all, but I couldn't think of what was missing.

       That was when I realized I was going full blown retard.  I didn't need the gnome to see what he looked like, I fucking had pictures of him.  Idiot!!!  So I take one of the pictures and do a reverse image lookup and sure enough I start seeing the very gnome I seek.  I check a few different links, but nothing is in a store close to Pittsburgh, nothing form the Pens Store, or WalMart, or Bed, Bath and Beyond that was currently in stock that I could go buy as a replacement for the gnome I broke.  But there was a link to a gnome on Amazon, he looked exactly the same and like the gnome parts in my possession, it is made in China and was made of some polymer resin thing.   And even better, I have money in my Amazon account, I can just place the order right now.  

      Well yes and no, I could place the order right now but the store that had the gnome just sells on Amazon, Amazon itself didn't have the gnome, so I could buy it but there would be a wait in delivery time, upwards of a week.  Well, I figure I might as well just do it now, the sooner I order it the sooner it gets here. 

     Monday I go into the bank, Gillian is back and she asks if I brought her gnome back.  Now if I were a liar I could have just said no not admit to anything happening and when the replacement came just swapped it out for the original, but that isn't who I am so I explained everything that happened, apologized profusely and said that I already had one on order to replace the gnome that I broke.  Gillian was very cool about it, she wasn't upset (at least to me) but to be honest I still felt like shit about it.

     Today I am at work and I get a package sent priority delivery which is odd because I didn't order anything in a hurried fashion, so I ope the box and the new gnome is inside.  I had it shipped to work so that I could just take it to the bank the day it arrived.  I set the gnome aside, got most of my work done and proceeded to gather up the deposits to take to the bank and then placed the gnome in my bag.  I get to the bank and give Gillian the deposits and reach into my bag and pull out the new gnome.  She looks at me and say, this one is bigger than the one I had.  I try to deny it, saying that it is probably just the size of the box but she opens it and sure enough, the gnome is like twice the size of the one I broke.  Leave it to me to order the Apache Chief of the gnome world.  Innekchok indeed!!!

    Okay enough of story time for today, I need to get some sleep before work tomorrow morning.  Nite everyone!!!