Let me see if I can condense this story and still get across how funny it was, at least to me and my friend Willie. A few years ago the two of us were in London, both of us for the first time, on business. As a gag, a British friend talked me into tasting a spoonful of Marmite, which he described as a super-sweet cake icing-type treat. Well, I can’t begin to tell you what an awful NON-SWEET taste it has, at least to my Texas taste buds!
Playing the gag forward, I did the same thing to Willie and thought he was going to pass out right on the spot. I laughed … but wait! … that’s only the introduction to my story.
A few days later, I was heading back to the States and he was going to Paris to meet his girlfriend at a small hotel. I sneaked a jar of Marmite into his duffel and started looking forward to the reaction I knew he’d have. A week later, when he’d gotten back, he told me this tale, which was even better than I expected.
He had arrived at the Paris hotel in the middle of the night and ALL the light were out, as was the elevator. Somehow he’d managed to find his girlfriend’s upper-floor room, but because it was 3 a.m. and pitch black, he sat down on the floor to get his flashlight out of the duffel before knocking. He said that the second his hand brushed the jar of Marmite, which I had carefully buried at the bottom and which of course he couldn’t see, he knew exactly what it was and who had put it there and started laughing so hard that his girlfriend actually heard him and opened the door.
It makes a great story for people who know Willie’s and my weird sense of humor, and every time we tell it we get hysterical.