Medallion Status: True Stories from Secret Rooms

by John Hodgman

Later that season, the Director and I worked together again at an old three-story mansion in Jefferson Park. The house was pillared and decayed and used frequently as a setting for scary movies. Wandering it between takes I found a pentagram painted in blood red on the floor in the basement, and a second-floor bedroom that was empty except for dozens of creepy dolls, scattered on the floor. Why hadn’t anyone cleaned up the dolls after the last shoot? Or were the dolls permanent, just held here in reserve should a future movie need a creepy doll scene? Maybe it was a selling point. Or maybe I was the only one who could see the dolls. I spent a lot of time up in that room contemplating this mystery. (Check my Instagram.)

In Cocoa Beach, Florida, there is a hotel that has a whole surf shop in it. If you do not know what a surf shop is, it is a shop in a strip mall on Cocoa Beach that very rarely sells surfing supplies, but mostly sells clothing to cool young kids who want to stop looking cool and instead look like young Guy Fieri, and old dudes who do want to look cool but will settle for looking like weird dad Jason Mraz.

This happened again and again on street corners and at rest stops. I should note that no one ever said, “It’s John Hodgman! Why are you wearing that hat?” They only cared about the hat. This was how I began to realize I was no longer as famous as the saddest extinct foreign sports team.

My son suggested going into Fantasyland on his own, crying, claiming to be lost. He would say, “I want my mommy” over and over. Eventually a nice family would come to help him. And then he would say, “Never mind, I found her.” He would point up to Grimhilde the evil robot, peering through the curtains. “That is my mommy,” he would say, with the flat affect of a child in a horror movie. And then he would call up to her. “I’ve brought you another family, Mommy,” he would say. As I say, he was nine at the time. I was extremely proud of him for thinking of this and I still am. However, I pointed out, wandering around crying for your mommy is not likely to get you thrown in Disney Jail. It is more likely to have you taken away from us by Disney Child Protective Services—or, for that matter, a murderer.

“You know what?” said not Snakea, but a different young woman. “You remind me of Will Shortz.” And I said, “That is the meanest thing a twenty-two-year-old woman could ever say to me.” She said, “No! Will Shortz is a complicated guy!” which did not make me feel better and cannot actually be true. Can it?

My dawning class awareness was nothing to brag about. It’s just to say that work makes your world bigger and shows you your mistakes. It helps you to see other people in their human forms.

Going with ticket stubs to get discounts at the ice cream place and the bookstore across the street, and also offering free movies to their employees, because you are all part of a retail secret society

You could curate a whole, actual Film Fest featuring only movies in which Bill Pullman gets conned and confused, and the best thing to do would be to invite Bill Pullman to this festival and give him the wrong address. Someday.

Easy jobs are great. And as you ease into them, they get even better. They do not challenge you, and you never want to leave. But be careful about getting stuck in the easy jobs. Days turn to years quickly when you are not challenged, frightened, tested. And then maybe someone will invent Netflix.

I was serious when I said I am ready to do a reality show now. Specifically I am suggesting a show called Property Only Child, where I go with young, childless couples and help them pick out their dream home in Winnipeg or whatever, and then I ask if I can then live with them as their very special boy. Think it over.

If you grew up, as I did, confusing praise with oxygen, the audition room is the utter vacuum of deepest space. But you can survive there. That was a remarkable lesson in itself. And the longer you spend in that praiseless void, the less you rely on it. This is called, I have read, “not giving a fuck,” and it’s very liberating!

I can disappear into making breakfast sandwiches, and as I get older, I often feel that is a good final outcome for me.

He offers to send me the screenplay he’s writing. And I say yes, sure. But he never actually sends it to me, which is a special kind of kindness.