Danny and the Scabs

Danny was a desk clerk at the Hilton Hotel in Syracuse, New York. He was a short little Italian guy. He was kind of cute with grey, silver slicked back hair, neatly-pressed clothes, clean fingenails, and he always smelled good - the whole clean, neat bit.

My girlfriend, Lori, and I were always up to a good joke. We were always teasing him about his neatness. Soon we discovered he was really fanatic about it.

Lori had some sores on her arm from a fall or something like that. We were always tormenting Danny with her sores. We would walk past the desk and say ,"Heh! Danny! Look at Lori's sores!" He would tell us how gross we were. Like we didn't know? We knew he could not stand us doing that.

One day at the theater Lori was pickign the scabs off her sores. I said, "That's pretty gross." She said, "I know - good think Danny can't see it." I replied, "Well, maybe he should!" Lori answered, "Oh! You think so?" This began the ultimate horror for a fanatic freak!

After the show, we went back to the hotel. Lori had her scabs wrapped up in a kleenex. As soon as we opened the door, there was Danny sitting in the lobby relaxing on his time off. He was his usual self - just "clean as a pin".

I hollered, "Danny! Lori picked her scabs off and is gonna send them to her boyfriend in Kansas City!" He said, "Oh! NO! That's sick!" Lori said, "No it's not! He wants to see them." Danny replied, "Then he must be sick, too." Lori answered, "Here! You wanna see 'em, Danny?" She held out the kleenex they were wrapped in. Danny hollered, "No! I don't want to see them!" She kept getting closer to him holding the kleenex closer as she moved in for the kill. Danny hollered, "Get away from me with those scabs! I don't wanna see 'em!" Then she opened the kleenex and said, "Here Danny, look at my SCABS!" By now, she had them right under his nose. I think he would have knocked them out of her hand if he had not been afraid of one touching him. Instead, he just kept telling her to get away and moving his head back as far as he could while she moved the scabs closer to his nose.

Then she did something that surprised even me but was really funny. She grabbed his head; so he could not move and stuck the scabs up his nose.

He was so mad; but he stayed seated and just wiggled his nose wondering how to get the scabs out. It was beyond him to reach up there with his finger and dig them out. He would never admit to picking his nose. He alwas said he just blew it.

We teased him about the scabs for days afterwards asking him how he got them out, etc. He never would say he picked them out; and he never again was sitting in the lobby after we got off work.