Hot Dogs Are Inherently Funny

This post could also be titled, Why Alexa Has 1300 All Beef Hot Dogs in Her Refrigerator.

I'd like to make the case that hot dogs are inherently funny. Of course, I have recently had quite a hilarious episode with hot dogs, so I may be biased. While considering this episode, keep in mind that I am a vegetarian who partakes of fish but has had pretty much zero meat for over 15 years, and, really, hot dogs are a pretty lowly meat product.

So on with the episode . . . one of my co-workers chairs the Longmont Celebrates Cinco de Mayo committee. She has all the good insider knowledge on the celebration and committee gossip. Turns out, the celebration lost their hot dog vendor about two weeks before the event (I know, first question to ask . . . why is someone selling hot dogs at a Cinco de Mayo celebration? Apparantly, quite a few kids and some adults don't like Mexican food and would rather have a hot dog. Huh! Who knew?). Our little informational booth quickly turned into a hot dog booth after a brief conferring with my executive director, acknowledgement that I had absolutely no knowledge about selling hot dogs and handing over of a $100 check for our booth.

Fast forward to Saturday, May 5. After a one and a half hour health department briefing the night before in about 90% Spanish (quite the experience to be the only English speaking person at a meeting!), setting up and passing health inspection, we were ready to sell our hot dogs. The lovely Colorado weather forecasters predicted rain, rain and more rain with a scattering of thunderstorms for the day (point to note here, there is something mysterious about Colorado weather in that weather forecasters seem to be wrong about 75% of the time. Let's not get started on the wopping blizzard that never hit back in March). Turnout at Cinco de Mayo was good but not as good as expected due to iffy weather (but not the terrible weather predicted), clouds, rain just to the west of us and some sprinkles here and there. Sales were pretty good. Our lines were never as long as the Mexican food stands (for which, I was quite happy, disregarding our very slowly moving inventory). At 4:30, the sky started to look really bad. We lowered our prices and had a dollar dog sale. At 5:00, it started to pour and the celebration was closed up in about 30 minutes.

Overall, we sold about 300 hot dogs. You might think, not too bad for a first time out. But, really, it is bad if you bought 1600 hot dogs for the day, had a trail of four cars drive to your house after the event and unloaded 1300 hot dogs into your spare rerigerator in the pouring rain. You might also think, thank God you didn't buy the original amount you'd discussed - 3000 hot dogs (no, I'm not kidding. The weather saved us). I have spent about two weeks trying to think of ways to lucratively get rid of these hot dogs - dollar for dogs donation campaign, gifts to our volunteers and board of directors, a weekend hot dog stand, selling them to the Home Depot hot dog guy, hosting a hot dog eating contest. I have had some takers on buying packages. But, no doubt, if they are like me, they might be a little intimidated about buying a package of 40 hot dogs . . . that's 5 pounds of all beef tube steak.

Try telling people about my hot dog full refrigerator. Before you even get to the background story, people will no doubt laugh because I have to say there is just something inherently funny about hot dogs. Or, maybe, there's something inherently funny about having 1300 hot dogs in your spare refrigerator.