I Popped My Culture

I like to stay current with today’s popular culture. Clothes, music, hairstyles… I live to know about the latest craze. Why? So I can stay away from it. If everybody’s doing it, it must be bad for you.

I will make an exception for one popular activity I heard about recently. It’s the “Paddle” auction. Paddle auctions are popular with women who get together at predetermined meeting places and bid on things that women like to have, like cosmetics and other girly stuff. I believe that Mary Kay Cosmetics are the main items up for bid at the Paddle auctions. You know, it used to be that a pink Cadillac was all a Mary Kay sales rep needed. Then the pimps started driving them, and… well, pimpin’ ain’t easy.

I guess selling Mary Kay ain’t easy either… hence, the Paddle auction. But, why call it that? Why not just call it a “Make-up” auction, or an “I Want to be Pretty” auction? Or better yet, call it a “No Dudes Allowed” auction. I’ll tell you why… because Paddle auctions don’t involve cash.

A typical auction involves an auctioneer who stands up in front of a crowd spitting out syllables at 100 miles an hour, taking cash bids on different items from the people in the audience. If a person is lucky, they will get the top bid and the auctioneer’s lips won’t go numb before the next item goes up for sale.

Paddle auctions are different, in that… items are put up for bid, but instead of cash, the women declare how many whacks with a paddle they can stand in order to own that item.

“I can take that mascara for… two whacks.”

“I’ll take it for three!”

“Four whacks. I’ll take that mascara for four whacks!”

(The crowd gasps) “Take that mascara.”

Sounds like loads of fun. What I want to know is… how do I apply to be the auctioneer?

This takes me back to the days of corporal punishment when I was in junior high. Corporal punishment, or simply “whacks” as they were know to us heathens, forced me to don several pairs of underwear covered by two pairs of jeans every Friday, because that’s when they gave out whacks. You couldn’t look forward to the weekend without a reminder of how bad you were at school that week. 

At the end of the day on Fridays, I’d walk stiff-legged into the gymnasium (or as my fellow hooligans and I called it… the whack-a-torium) and wait in line to receive our due punishment, administered by the calloused and burly hands of our gym teacher. 

She was a hulk of a woman who had immigrated to this country from Norway. Gunda was once favored to win the women’s shot-put event in the 1968 Summer Olympics, but was disqualified for testing positive for Rhino spleen. Angry and bitter, (and more hair on her arms than Joe, the custodian) she wielded a wooden paddle like a mighty hammer of justice. A whack from Gunda was like a whack from Thor… the God of Thunder.

So, if you hear of any openings for “Paddle Auction Auctioneer,” send me a line. I need some payback.