I had completely forgotten about this little bit of wifely assistance I performed for my husband until he mentioned it recently. I forget what about our conversation prompted him to recall the story, but he said something to the effect of, “You know, like that time I had you sew underwear on Dilbert.”
Now, you’d think one would remember such a task, but no, the memory had been buried, lost beneath other details like the birth of our children.
Having dug the details up once more, I recalled the incident, and demanded my husband provide me with photographic evidence, so I may write about it here – my personal eternal archive of the mundane and magnificent alike.
This is the premise: my husband has long been a fan of the Scott Adams’ cartoon strip, Dilbert. He sympathizes with the plight of the IT office guy, I suppose. He also appreciates the snarky wit of Dogbert. Over the years I have given him some Dilbert related gifts: books, Christmas lights, calendars, and once – a little tapestry/wall hanging thing. This last item must be rarer than I realized, because a brief Google image search turned up nothing. I had hoped to show you all what it looked like in its original de-pantsed glory, but no luck. Basically, the tapestry is a representation of one of Adams’s favorite topics: Casual Friday. At this point, one of Dilbert’s co-workers may have taken the concept a bit far by deciding his birthday suit is a respectable choice.
Wanting to share the humor with his co-workers , my husband brought the wall hanging to the office. Now, all we the audience are treated to is a rather innocuous view of a backside. Apparently though, someone found this bit of booty provocative, and deemed it inappropriate. Their complaints prompted a visit from HR, and a request that my husband remove the offensive material from his cubicle. The problem was they never specified just what “offensive material” they were referring to – so after a bit of head scratching, my husband gave up and just asked. When he found out what exactly was causing all the hullabaloo – the ridiculousness of the situation was just too much for him, and thus the request for me to, “Sew some pants on Dilbert.”
Here are the results of my efforts:
My husband sent a little note to Scott Adams about the incident, and he actually got a reply – with Adams appreciating the humor of the situation and our solution.
What have we come to in this life, where people exist who have nothing better to do than worry whether or not the benign buttocks of a cartoon character in somebody else’s cubicle are properly covered?
Melonie Johnson 