So, I put gingerhaze’s “hipster hobbits” picture up on my wall, at work, because that’s the sort of person I am, now.
For those of you whose lives have been empty and meaningless, thus far, it can be found here. For everyone else, there’s Mastercard.
Immediately, Coworker E came over to see what I was doing. She stood at a safe distance and frowned at the picture for a good five minutes, pursing her lips, before quietly and conspiratorially leaning forward and saying, “What does it mean?”
“What do you think it means?” I said.
She stared for another couple of minutes, before hesitantly whispering, “… … is it sexual?”
Which was magnificent.
In order to illuminate the joke for her, I had to explain not only Lord of the Rings, but also hipsters, neither of which she’d encountered before, despite being the same age as me, and therefore having access to just as many lonely teenage shut-in hours, which by rights she should have been spending on the internet, learning about these sorts of things. I don’t know why I’m always surprised that other people have had more success at being human beings than I have.
Anyway, once I’d talked her through the whole thing, she called over our compatriot, Coworker T, pointed at the picture, and demanded that Coworker T tell her what she thought it meant.
There was a long pause, before Coworker T shuffled forward and said, awkwardly, “…Does it mean poo?”
Which was even more magnificent. Although awful, because I don’t know what sort of image I’ve been projecting in my workplace, but apparently it’s as the sort of person who likes to stick sexy poo jokes up on the wall.
Rather than explain the whole thing all over again, I turned to Coworker E and said, “You tell her what it really means.”
At which point she said, and I quote verbatim:
“So, there’s this band that you’ve never heard of, called The Hipsters, right? And they all drink coffee. And they all wear glasses with no lenses in them. And you know The Shire, yeah? Well, there are all these little people, who eat all the time. [triumphant pause] And that’s the joke!”
