An American Legend Comes to Life

Story Sent in by Josephine:

On his profile, Reggie seemed clean-cut, sane, and funny. He wrote me first and I was excited to be in touch with him. We made plans to meet at a local farm stand, browse around a bit, then go out for lunch.

Reggie's photos, turns out, were a bit misleading, and by "a bit," I mean, "extremely." In person, he was morbidly overweight, wore a plaid, red and black checkered lumberjack shirt, had a massive, unkempt beard, and had somehow poured himself into a pair of tight-as-painted-on jeans. For all intents and purposes, he looked like…

"Paul Bunyan!" he said, extending a hand to me, "At least, that's what everyone else calls me."

I shook his hand hesitantly. "You don't look at all like your pictures," I pointed out.

He pulled out a key chain and showed it to me. It was a pewter woodsman's axe. He said, "Can't go around with a real axe, but I figure this would be a fitting substitute."

"Okay, why Paul Bunyan?"

He went on ignoring me. "I don't have my blue ox, yet. But check this out." He pulled out his cell phone and showed me a photo of what looked like a paper-mache blue ox, about a foot tall, sitting on a table, covered in newspaper. "I made it myself."

"Wow. So why Paul Bunyan?"

He replied, "Because that's just who I look like. I've even gotten paid to be a Bunyan impersonator at a couple of gigs."

"You don't look at all like your photos."

"No, I look more like Paul Bunyan, now." He laughed.

I said, "I'm going to go. I'm sorry. I just thought you'd look more like your photos."

"Whoa, hello Miss. Superficiality." He then turned around to face the farm stand and said, "I'm coming, Babe!"

I went home.



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Non-American readers! Find out about Paul Bunyan here.