How To Stick a Dorito to Your Shirt

For Halloween this past fall, my brother Chris decided he would disguise himself as a man with a chip on his shoulder.  After considering many types of chips he might use, he felt a Nacho Cheese Dorito would be his best option. 

During my dad’s Thanksgiving visit we discussed the unexpected hardship Chris encountered in trying to assemble the costume.  He couldn’t glue the chip to his shirt because no glue would adhere adequately to the oily chip coating.  After a couple of failed attempts with glue he decided he would have to sew the Dorito in place.  He bored two tiny holes in a chip (smashing a dozen before he succeeded) and fastened it to the shoulder of his shirt with needle and thread.  Shortly after he finished this painstaking project, a co-worker came in the door of the Portland restaurant where they both work and said, “Oh, man, you’ve got something on your…” and, trying to brush the embarrassing junk off Chris’s sleeve, he smashed the sewn Dorito to bits.  Chris had to start over.

Dad listened with interest, and offered these ideas for how Chris could have had better luck:

1.       He could have fashioned a fake chip out of falafel, like a vegan chip sculpture.  This would have been more pliable and easier to sew.

2.       He could have used a dessicant to suck the oil and moisture out of the chip before trying to glue it on to the fabric.

3.       Did he try hot glue?

4.       He could have applied a lacquer coating to the chip before gluing.

5.       He could have dipped the chip in hot paraffin wax, then melted it to the shirt sleeve.

6.       What about quick-dry cement?  You dunk the chip, then squish it onto the shirt sleeve before it dries.

7.       A silicone sealant? 

8.       What about magnets?

My brother-in-law, Dan, intervened.  “I think you’re over thinking this.  Had he built a frame for the chip…a simple wooden structure…”

Then I related the story that Chris told me about the guy with the ironic beard who works at the Whole Foods in Portland: any time Chris goes through his check-out line the guy is cold and unfriendly.  It’s the ironic beard, Chris says, that causes him to behave this way.  (What is an ironic beard, I asked.  Oh, it’s a beard that’s intentionally ugly, grown for the purpose of seeming ironic and artsy and mysterious.)  At first Chris tried to be friendly, and claims to have been repeatedly snubbed by Whole Foods Beard Man.  Except for this—on Halloween, while leaving Whole Foods dressed in his “costume,” Beard Man looked at him, then looked again, and for the first time he brightened.  His face lit up and he smiled and he said, “Oh, I get it.  You have a chip on your shoulder!”

So what did Chris do?  He snubbed Beard Man.  He gave a small grunt, ignored the friendly gesture, and left with his Dorito intact, but one small chip carved out of his everlasting soul.

Dad said, “Man, the guy stuck the olive branch out, and Chris broke it off and built a fire with it.”

Revenge is bittersweet.