Whaler

This is a great guest post from Kevin from MySpellingSucks.com.  Kevin has a great blog where he often discusses an issue near and dear to my heart...Family.  I hope you enjoy this post.  When you finish take a trip over to his blog and say hello.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevintice/ - created this Photo.

 

It was late summer 1993 we, my friend Ilan, now Rabbi Weinberg, and I, were up at his lake house and had swum out to the middle of the lake. It was a beautiful hot late summer day. He was about to head off to Pitt and I was going into my senior year of High School. I was in prime (for me) shape having just completed or School triathlon. It was a great day and Ilan was one of my oldest friends. I had know him since I was 2 or 3.

 

We went to nursery school together. We played soccer together. We played Miami Vice together. We formed a band even though I don’t and didn’t play an instrument and I can’t sing. We went to concerts together. He was a skinny little kid and I was a pretty big hefty guy.

 

So at one of the soccer games a bunch of kids started calling me Whaler. I have no idea where it came from but it bothered me. I asked why they were calling me Whaler of course heavy enough to be self conscious but not quite so heavy that I was sure what they were talking about.  At first no answer but eventually they said, they were calling me that because they thought I could eat the entire BK Whaler sandwich. (Since my wife didn’t know what a Whaler is - It was the marketing name of what is now the BK Big Fish sandwich, and BK = Burger King, shame on you if you don’t know.) They called me this name for a few years but eventually I stopped reacting and they got bored of it and they were after all, my friends. Whaler went by the wayside.

 

Ilan and I started to swim back from the middle of the lake and while I can’t remember what prompted it, I suddenly turned over, said “Hey guess who I am?”, Then I took a mouth full of water, turned on my back and blow holed it up into the air. He didn’t get it at first so I did it again. He still didn’t get it so I said “WHALER!” He started cracking up and I’m lucky he didn’t drown.

 

It’s great when you can learn to laugh at yourself and help others to laugh with you.

***Thanks again Kevin for the guest post.  If you're interested in writing a guest post for Chew the Fat, as long as it fits the feeling, my answer is yes.  Contact me through Twitter or email me at fatchomper at gmail dot com.