Brutus Buckeye, Ohio State University’s official mascot. His buckeye-headed self is right at home in the domain of Mayor McCheese.
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: once again we went to Columbus, Ohio! In a failed effort to shorten the verbiage in that four-part, 5900-word saga, I held back all our non-convention-related pics from that weekend for their own separate gallery. I didn’t think our brief influx of visiting cosplay fans would notice the omission.
As it happens, most of our outtakes come from a single location. After we checked out of our hotel Saturday morning, we stopped for breakfast at a McDonald’s down the street, which usually wouldn’t rate a mention here. To our surprise, their lobby held an unexpected museum of sorts — several displays celebrating the assorted sports teams of nearby Ohio State University. We normally stay at hotels in and around the OSU campus whenever we’re in town for GCC, but somehow we’d missed this spot and their collection till now.
At age 16 the thought of a part-time after-school job never occurred to me until I received a letter one day from a man named David Sleppy, owner/operator of the McDonald’s down the street from my high school. His store had launched a new recruitment program that offered a higher starting wage to applicants who were on the school’s honor roll — $3.85/hour at a time when minimum wage was $3.35/hour. As an introverted, insular kid with no self-awareness and minimal exposure to social worlds beyond my own limited boundaries, it wasn’t tempting until I did the math and realized that $3.85/hour was greater than my $5/week allowance. I figured why not. And hey, the letter guaranteed the job. Back in those days, silver platters were my favorite way of receiving things.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 