Today was the weirdest Thanksgiving of my life.
I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Joey; I'm seventeen years old and surviving in the suburban wildes around Houston, Texas. Every year, my family gets together to gorge ourselves on tofurkey and mediocre stuffing bought for way too much money at Whole Foods, or as I like to call it, Bourgeoisie Central. After dinner, we sit around and watch whatever football game that I don't care about and tell stories that alert me once again to the insipidness of my life. This Thanksgiving was no exception, until we got to the stories.
My grandpa went first, and when he spoke we all respectfully shut up. Not because he was some old honorable man who commanded respect; quite the contrary. He had a stroke about two months ago, losing control of his left arm and face. So when we shut up, it was so we could hear him speak.
Then he told us this incredible story about how when he was in 'Nam, fighting for whatever the hell we were fighting for, he almost died from something he called "Agent Orange". Now, all the old people in the room nodded like they knew what he was talking about, but I had to go and Google that shit once he was gone. According to Wikipedia, it caused a shitton of health problems in the veterans, but the government only helped with a few of the cases. Most people were left out to dry, but that's a tangent.
See, Grandpa was talking about how he inhaled some Agent Orange, and then went on to hallucinate later that night about a man with no face. Which is where I got the title of this blog.
I mean, seriously. The whole story fits the Slenderman thing like a glove. Tall, skinny, faceless man comes into camp and kills everyone... Only Grandpa wakes up and none of it actually happened. He wouldn't let it go though, started claiming that he saw it everywhere. That got him sent home pretty quick; nobody wanted a certifiable loon running around with a gun.
After that he just kind of spaced off. I got the feeling that the story had some sort of point that he'd forgotten about halfway through. Maybe he was trying to explain his life, since he felt it would be ending soon. Maybe he's going senile and thought that getting kicked out of 'Nam for being crazy was a little holiday humor. And then once he left, once I'd looked up what Agent Orange even was, his story didn't make sense.
Agent orange victims had stillborn babies and birth complications. They didn't hallucinate. At least, they didn't according to Wikipedia, which we all know has never lied before.
But whatever. I just wanted to put this story out there cuz I thought it was weird and would make some of you Slenderfans jizz about the possible Slenderman/Watergate connection.
Joey out.
