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MISS HEIDI’S HIDDEN TALENT
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Michelle Barrett had aspired to be a TV news journalist. The slightly chubby twenty-seven year old had graduated from a small public college with a degree in mass communications and was now stranded at a television station in a mid-sized market. She had taken a part time job as a weekend news anchor, but when she was offered the job as host of a weekday morning kiddie show, she mulled it over and reluctantly agreed, even though she didn’t even particularly like kids.
When she got a look at the format the station had come up with, she instantly decided she hated kids. The show was called “Miss Heidi”, a character the producers had dreamed up because they thought it fit her appearance. With shoulder-length straight blonde hair (which was augmented with fake braids for the show), a fair complexion exaggerated by the bright red lipstick she usually wore, and saucer-shaped brown eyes, she looked like a chubby girl-next-door. The mock 19th-century bohemian-style light blue pinafore she wore on the show helped to conceal her somewhat large rear end, but did little to enhance her modest bust measurement. It also revealed her fleshy legs over which she wore white silk stockings.
“Miss Heidi” was a storybook type concept, way too square for modern kids, a fact the ratings proved after the first three months. Michelle was uncomfortable with her role but had to drag herself to the studio five days a week and be cheerful and upbeat, playing games with the kids in the small studio audience and introducing cartoons. She also cavorted with a cast of actors playing out-dated characters such as Heidi’s grandfather, Doodles the Clown, and a woman known as the Forest Queen (a slender, school-marmish looking woman who was in her late thirties and dressed as a cross between a New Age earth mother and Maid Marion).
One morning before the show, in the dressing room the two women shared, Michelle playfully informed the Queen that she was going to get a little crazy and improvise a little. Not a lot, mind you, just enough to take some of the staleness out of the proceedings.
“Yeah, Michelle, I can imagine what you’re going to do!” the Queen chuckled, noticing that Michelle was wearing a white blouse and bra so sheer that the Queen could see through the material. Michelle’s nipples were about the size of quarters and were faintly visible, although she was too clueless to notice her own wardrobe indiscretion. She was also too clueless to realize that there was nothing soundproof about her dressing room and that the Queen had heard some of the sounds occasionally emanating from it in the afternoons after the show. Alone in the dressing room after the show, Michelle sometimes allowed herself the luxury of unbuttoning her blouse and rubbing her nipples and other sensitive areas of her flabby body to relieve the job stress and the frustration of not having much of a social life. Her high sex drive drove her to relieve herself at least once a day, even at work, and her nipples were so sensitive that when she whacked off she wished she had three hands.
That day’s live broadcast began as always. The opening sequence finished and Miss Heidi did her sickeningly sweet greeting about how nice it was to be there, and what a great show she had for the kids that morning. This was followed immediately by a “Casper the Friendly Ghost” cartoon.
After the cartoon and the first commercial break, Miss Heidi was supposed to introduce Doodles the Clown for a game involving participation with one of the kids in the studio audience. She stood in the corner of the set near where her associate was supposed to make his entrance through a doorway.
Miss Heidi sing-songed her introduction to Doodles the Clown. “Look out, boys and girls! Here comes Doodles!” she announced, affectedly wide-eyed. Right on cue, Doodles slammed open the door and bounded onto the set, to the cheers of the kids.
“Here I am, Miss Heidi, here I am!” crowed Doodles. He stood there for a moment with a big smile, then with a perplexed expression, as there was no response to his opening lines. As the children’s cheering gave way to howls of laughter, Doodles hurriedly looked around for a signal from Miss Heidi.
He saw why he wasn’t getting one. In the corner of the set, the door through which Boodles had just entered was slowly being pushed back into a closed position by the feet of Miss Heidi. When Boodles slammed the door open, the klutzy woman had been standing right beside it where she should have know that she was going to get creamed. Her eyes were closed as she leaned against the wall and grunted as she slid to a seated position on the floor, with her fleshy legs outstretched.
Doodles, guessing that this was the improvised craziness that she had told everyone about, played along.
“Oh my gosh, Miss Heidi!” he cried, dashing to aid the woman who was apparently pretending to be unconscious. “Gee, I’m sorry!”
Doodles called for his cohorts on the set to come to his aid, as he began lightly slapping the unconscious woman’s face and wrists. The cast gathered around the host. Since Miss Heidi was apparently doing an improvised routine, they instinctively stayed to one side or another to make certain that she was still on camera. Nobody on the set or in the control room realized that when Doodles had entered the set, slamming both the door and Miss Heidi against the wall, the blow had genuinely knocked her out.
For the first time in the history of the show, the kids in the studio were going into hysterics!
For a few moments, the cast crouched around the star, patting her cheeks and wrists and fanning air into her face. Doodles adlibbed lines about how they were going to finish the show with Miss Heidi stopping to take forty winks. The Forest Queen grabbed the limp Miss Heidi by her underarms to hold the plump woman in a reclining position for a better angle and cracked wise about how much weight the star was putting on. The grandfather suggested that they had better hurry, as another cartoon was coming up soon. The kids were laughing, and the engineers had even managed to quickly conjure up some electronic visuals of stars and chirping birds circling Miss Heidi’s head in close-up. Unbeknownst to her, she was giving the best performance of her career while she was unconscious.
After a few moments, Miss Heidi began moaning and stirring a little as she began to come to. With the camera shooting her from the waist up, the overhead microphone began to pick up the moans of the overweight young woman. The kids were laughing hysterically as the unconscious woman began slowly rolling her head from side to side and moaning groggily. “…Unnnhhhhh….,” she moaned as she slowly lifted her hand to her forehead.
Doodles yelled, “Hey! She’s comin’ to!”
Doodles had slammed Miss Heidi pretty hard with the door, and she was taking her own sweet time coming around. As she lay there moaning and writhing with her eyes closed and her hand on her head, she finally began to show signs that her light was flickering back on.
“Whaa…what happened…?” moaned Miss Heidi, as she feebly opened her eyes, her hand still resting on her forehead. The kids laughed harder than ever as the dazed woman shook her head vigorously to relieve the grogginess, but at that moment, there was a cue from the director that it was time to cut to a cartoon.
The Forest Queen let Miss Heidi slide out of her arms and onto the floor with a thud. Miss Heidi grunted painfully. The Queen walked toward the camera and shrugged her shoulders, apologetically announcing to the audience that it looked as though Miss Heidi was going to be busy for the next few minutes, so maybe they should watch another cartoon.
With a “Little Audrey” cartoon on the air, and the kids having such a good time with the routine that they were seeing live in the studio, the cast saw no reason not to continue to play along and stay in character. The grandfather and Doodles lifted the groggy, not-so-petite host into a standing position as Doodles continued to lightly slap her face.
“This is great, Michelle!” the grandfather whispered in her ear. “The kids are loving it!”
“Unnhhh…no…stop….,” Miss Heidi moaned, but her response went unnoticed. Between the reactions from the rowdy kids and all of the other confusion, there wasn’t much time to plan for the next sequence, but the three supporting cast members agreed that the next gag should involve Doodles leaving the set and, after the cartoon, returning with a glass of water to throw in the face of the semi-conscious woman. This was the most fun they had ever had on the show, a regular improv night.
When the cartoon finished, the Queen was standing in the foreground facing the audience while the grandfather was over in the corner holding the unsteady Miss Heidi on her feet. Telling the kids that Doodles had left to get some water to help Miss Heidi, Queenie’s idea was to set the gag up to sound as though the water was to be given to her to drink. The gag was actually to through it in her face.
The Queen fed Doodles his cue and he slammed open the door even more forcefully than before, running frantically onto the set with a large tumbler of water.
“Where’s Miss Heidi?” he asked, perplexed. Amid the howls of laughter from the kids, the Forest Queen looked at Doodles and pointed timidly to the corner of the set. From behind him, Doodles heard Miss Heidi moan. He turned to see her with a pained wince on her face, her eyes closed and her back against the wall, once again sliding to a seated position on the floor with her legs outstretched. For a second time, he had managed to knock her out cold.
The director signaled that the closing credits were about to roll. “Well, that’s our show for today, boys and girls,” announced Doodles. “Maybe Miss Heidi will have better luck tomorrow.”
As the closing credits and music started, and with the kids relentlessly cheering, the three cast members grouped around the woman they believed was pretending to be unconscious to “revive” her. In the last few seconds, as Miss Heidi lay there motionless and with her eyes closed, the Queen splashed the contents of the large tumbler of water onto Miss Heidi’s face. The would-be journalist came to instantly, spraying water out of her mouth and making a ridiculous Bronx cheer sound with her lips. As the show came to an end, and as she sat on the floor, propped against the wall with a goofy, confused expression on her face, the show’s director, producer and cast all realized that Michelle Barrett had finally discovered what she was really good at.
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Posted on : Nov 19, 2017
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