Enter the Spamboy, Part 2

Back in the mid-eighties, I was just beginning to blossom into an obnoxious teenager, setting the stage for the obnoxious adult I would soon become. What better time for me to be exposed to British comedy in the form of Monty Python! One afternoon, I was watching episodes of “Flying Circus” and couldn’t stop laughing at the Spam sketch. My father walked by, saw what I was watching, muttered that I was “sick,” and moved along on his merry own way.

One time after that day, I went with my mother to the grocery store, and we happened to stroll down the potted meat aisle. Its shelves were stocked high with signature blue and yellow cans of Spam. Like a good little parrot, I started quoting from the sketch I heard the other day. “Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam!”

Mom asked me if I had ever tried Spam. I hadn’t. Because she felt it was silly for me to talk about something I knew nothing about, and also because she was also curious to give it a taste, mom plucked a tin from the shelf, dropped it in our grocery basket, and the little pink bundle of joy came home with us that very afternoon.

It was my regular kid duty to unload and unpack any groceries we brought home. Into the pantry went the can of Spam, where it quickly became lost behind boxes of old Jell-O and stacks of expired veggies, forgotten in the mists of time like a salt-cured Ark of the Covenant.