Freddogg Off The Chain

Fiction is stranger than fact when treated as fact. Back in the early 1980’s I created a fictional character called “Fat Like Me” who wrote an advice column inside my column in the Whale Newspaper. No one wrote in asking for advice so I wrote to myself using a fictional name then answered as Fat Like Me a fictional character.

One letter had to do with the brand of high stakes state tests at the time and was written by a student annoyed that his teacher was slurping and gulping coffee in between multiple hits of greasy cheese toast. The kid said he finished the tests early but had to keep restarting his ceiling tile count because of the annoying noises made by the disgusting professional proctor. He signed it Samuel Sanka.

Fat Like Me wrote back and blasted the kid as a complainer and whiner and said he shouldn’t expect quiet as if he were doing something important like playing tennis or teeing off on the eighteenth fairway.

The next week I got a memo from the teachers union saying how upset they were because teachers were no longer allowed to drink coffee and eat cheese toast in their classrooms. I told them it wasn’t my fault that the school district was making policies based on the exploits of a fictional character.

I continued to drink coffee and received an official reprimand by certified mail for drinking coffee in my room when ordered not to do so my memo. It was suggested that I was a Passive Aggressive Insubordinate and I retaliated that I was a real person and they were looking for a fictional character and that perhaps the reprimand for drinking coffee was fictional registered mail or not.

This became a union grievance in the person of Fat Like Me which was resolved when I claimed fictional harassment of a real person.

It’s all in my file which I should subpoena so I can build a party around it.

Peace

Fat Like Freddogg