The walrus just became my new favorite animal.
This all started tonight when my cousin posted a picture on Facebook of herself and her younger sister, circa 1989. They are seated in a little red wagon and my younger cousin looks like her face has begun the slow, painful process of eating itself. Seriously, her cheeks are freaking huge. Like, physically impossible huge. No child should ever suffer the immense weight of so much face fat at such a young age. ”Behemoth” doesn’t begin to describe their sheer magnitude. They appear to have their own gravitational pull. It’s sad, really.
“She looks like a pufferfish wearing a bonnet,” I wrote under the picture.
“She was the size of a baby walrus growing up,” my cousin replied.
“I can’t hold my pee in I’m laughing so hard,” her younger sister typed with her walrus hands, peeing all over herself in a fit of uncontrollable laughter.
This hilarious discussion led to me Googling “baby walrus,” which was a delight in and of itself because I knew in my heart of hearts that this term has never been Googled before by anyone anywhere. Go ahead and do it later and tell me how awesome the image results were for you.
While we’re on the subject of walruses, I’ve long held the notion that no human better resembles the walrus - and vice versa - than Wilford Brimley. If you put a walrus in a Quaker Oats or Liberty Medical diabetes testing supplies commercial, I wouldn’t know the difference. I’d be like, “Look at that walrus riding a horse trying to sell me oatmeal! I bet he has diabetes!” (For the record, diabetes is no laughing matter. Wilford Brimley pronouncing it “diabeetus” is however.)
There exists on YouTube a clip of Wilford Brimley’s face morphing into that of a walrus. The resemblance is uncanny. The whiskers, the mustache, it’s beautiful. As if that isn’t amazing enough, someone with far too much time on their hands - probably a pimply Danish hooligan named Kaarll - created an unreal YouTube remix entitled “Wilford Brimley’s Diabetes Dance Mix.” Again, search for it after reading this and send me a mental high-five. I couldn’t make this stuff up better if I tried.
If I may digress, just think for a minute about how cool it would be to own a walrus and train it to do tricks for your friends…
Obviously, the first trick I would teach Ben (that’s what I’d name him) would be to sing along in a British accent to The Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus.” On every “goo goo g’joob” he’d lift his John Lennon glasses with his flipper and cross his walrus eyes and there would be much frivolity indeed. ”LOL!” my friends would exclaim.
I’d train him to valet cars at various large social gatherings such as wedding receptions or neighborhood block parties. He’d wear a red velvet tuxedo jacket and do a horrible job.
I’d sign him up for toothpaste commercials.
We’d be best friends.
That is, until he had to go back to his walrus family at sea (understandable) and we’d be forced to part ways. He’d gently pat my side with his walrus flipper, entrust me with his John Lennon glasses, and clumsily waddle off the dock and into the cold, bitter waters of goodbye, while tender strains of “I’m Free” by John Secada would meander about softly in the distance.
“Godspeed, sweet friend. Godspeed,” I’d say.
Fade to black, credits, hilarious outtakes of Ben as a valet setting off car alarms and losing keys over a Smashmouth song.