Kirk Cousins is not who you think he is, part 2

Ed note: This is a work of parody. If the ridiculous photoshop picture didn’t give it away, or the first two sentences after this disclaimer don’t do the trick, this disclaimer that says ‘HEY THIS IS A PARODY’ should. If you’re still not sure, please don’t fill out an application to become an astronaut. Because you are stupid, and not qualified.

This is part 2, aka the conclusion, and if you want to read from the beginning, the first part is right here. ——Thanks, Ted

The drive to Ypsilanti was done almost in a haze. Radio on, then radio off. I tried listening to some music from my iPod, and that didn’t work either. Radio on again...and it’s Michigan sports radio. Other than some success for Sparty under a former Ohio State defensive coordinator, Michigan sports is about as bleak and desolate as Green Bay in February. Or July. Or any of the other ten months of the year, if we’re being honest with each other.

I turned the radio on again.

/turns AM dial

/radio crackles

/”...AND THAT’S WHY MATTHEW STAFFORD IS GOING TO THE HALL OF FA—”

/radio off

I just couldn’t get my mind off of what Deep Sparty had told me about Kirk Cousins. It was incomprehensible to believe that this public image was just a charade, a mirage. He wasn’t bland, apparently. This is no Joe Mauer we are dealing with, Minnesota.

And I was going to prove it.

I pull in to the Midas shop I was told about, parked the car, and headed inside. Although the door opened, and a small bell chimed, it looked like the shop was closed. There were no cars in the bay, and just one overhead light in the waiting area.

Did I have the wrong place?

Suddenly, a man appeared from the back, like he knew I was coming.

“Hello”, I said. “Are you Bob?”

“I am. I was told you were looking for tires for your car.”

I looked at him with a confused look on my face. Bob quickly pulled out a pen, grabbed some paper, and frantically wrote ‘FOLLOW MY LEAD’.

“Yeah”, I said, I was sent here by—”

Bob held up his hand, shaking his head. ‘NO NAMES’ he scrawled on the paper.

“...Yelp”, I quickly ad-libbed. “This place gets some great reviews, and I read you have the largest selection of tires in the area.”

Bob smiled, and a wave of relief looked to come over his face.

“Yes, we do. Let’s go back to my office. I’ve got a catalog there, and you can look through it and pick out what you like.”

We walked back to his office, and just like my contact in Battle Creek, Bob was an unremarkable guy. His Midas shirt had some grease stains, like one would expect to see on a mechanic’s shirt, and he looked like a regular guy, trying to get by in America. His office was clean, other than some miscellaneous papers stacked in one corner, and there was no magazine in sight. As we walked in, Bob flipped a switch, but no additional light came on.

“Okay”, he said with a sigh of relief. “We’re safe to talk in here. I just flipped on an electronic jamming device that doubles as a white noise generator.”

“What?!”

“Look, you can’t be too careful. Kirk is a guy that fiercely protects his image as this dull, boring guy. If he found out you were on to him...”

Bob’s voice trailed off, and he shook his head. He paused an uncomfortably long time before continuing.

“It would be bad. He might ding dong ditch you after 10 PM, or maybe toilet paper your trees. This is a man you don’t want to mess with, but this needs to get out. People need to know. Okay?”

“Okay”, I shakily said. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go on, but if Bob was willing to risk it all, didn’t he deserve to have his story told? His courage rubbed off on me. Oh, wait. That was a grease stain. Damn it, and these were brand new jorts, too. Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound.

“Hit me with it.”

“It all seemed so mundane at first. It was a regular work day, and this conversion van pulls in. It was about the most nondescript vehicle I’d ever seen, other than some dings on it. Guy gets out and walks in, and asks if I can come outside with him and take a look.”

“Kirk Cousins?”

“Yeah, in the flesh. I didn’t know it right then, though. He had on this mostly plain guy, blend in outfit on—plain gray shirt, cargo shorts; about the most average, run of the mill look a guy can have. But he was wearing a baseball cap pulled down over his face.”

But then Bob leaned in and whispered, even though we were essentially in a safe room.

“And he was wearing mirrored sunglasses.”

The hair on my neck stood up as Bob continued.

“He very politely asked me outside to look at his van, and began talking about this problem that had to be kept under wraps, as it was a sensitive matter. He leads me to the side of the van, and it’s all dinged up. Several really solid dents. Kinda weird, like someone had hit it with something.”

“Bob,” he recalled Kirk saying, “I had some problems last night, and I need you to help me get rid of this evidence. I was at my bachelor party at MSU Stadium and things...well they got a little out of control.”

“So I’m thinking some dancing girls,” Bob said excitedly, the cadence in his voice picking up, “maybe a fight broke out, or some things were said that shouldn’t have been said when you get a little too much fire water in your belly, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, oh yeah I know. We’ve all been there, at least once. Today.”

“But this...this was something on another level indeed,” Bob said. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”

I was having a hard time trying to figure out what was coming, but Bob continued.

“So this guy says that during his bachelor party, someone broke out a case of Coke, and they went out to the parking lot.”

“Wait wait wait,” I interjected. “Did you say Coke? Coca Cola? So you’re going to tell me—with a straight face—that Kirk Cousins drinks more than just tepid tap water?”

Bob sat back in his chair and nodded.

“Yes,” he continued. “and it was cherry flavored Coke, to boot.”

“Not even diet, but regular?”

“Yes.”

I had to concentrate to keep my body from shaking, I was so unnerved.

“But that’s only half the story. So he says they get out to the parking lot, and things really went off the rails. Apparently someone had a couple packs of Mentos mints on them—”

“Oh My God, no. No way.”

“Yes.” Bob dropped his head and nodded solemnly. “They dropped the Mentos in to the bottles of Coke.”

I sat back in my chair, thunderstruck. These are not the acts of a normal man. These are the acts of a man that has a personality, dare I say even a sense of humor and cuts loose every now and then. And it was a side of him he was desperately trying to keep from getting out.

Bob continued.

“So he’s telling me how they turned these Coke bottles into what were basically bottle rockets. And in the ensuing melee, a few went off course and hit his van, and he wanted the dings knocked out. I told him sure, no problem, we weren’t too busy and I could get to it right away.”

“Wait,” I interjected. “How do you know he was on the up and up about this?”

“Well, the side door of the was open, and in the back of the van were some empty coke bottles and crumpled up packs of Mentos wrapped up in clear plastic bags, tightly taped up. Had a shovel and a box of surgeon’s gloves back there, too.”

“So he was going to bury the evidence,” I theorized.

“Or plant it,” Bob quickly interjected. “Do you know what a misdemeanor disturbing the peace charge on the MSU campus carries? You could really hang that over someone’s head if you were creative enough. No one wants to do that kind of time.”

No kidding, I thought. Hard time in East Lansing is a fate worse than death.

“So anyway,” Bob continued, “this guy didn’t really want to leave his van at the shop, but I told him there was a decent ice cream joint just down the road, and I’d be done in an hour. So I pretended like I wasn’t watching as he quickly threw all the stuff in the back of his van under an MSU blanket, gave me the keys, and headed down the sidewalk. It took no time at all to fix the dents, but as we were working on it, in the background there was a clip on the TV, and without looking up, I recognized the voice. It was the guy who owned this van, so I look at the screen, and it says ‘Kirk Cousins’ at the bottom. I was fixing his van!”

“So you were pretty happy about it then?”

“Oh, who wouldn’t be? It’s Kirk Cousins, All American, mild mannered boring guy...only he’s not that. Not that at all.”

“What happened next?”

“He comes back to the shop and walks to the counter, big smile on his face. He was really enjoying his ice cream. I fully expected it to be vanilla, because it’s Kirk Cousins, right? But it wasn’t.”

“After everything I’ve seen and heard, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” I said with a hint of resignation. “What kind was it?”

“Chocolate chip.”

I was emotionless at this point, numbed to what I had heard about the starting quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings. I remained stiff and stoic, partly because I was smack dab in the story of a lifetime for a respected blogger, and partly because this chair was uncomfortable and my back was starting to hurt.

Bob leaned in and whispered again, saying in a hoarse voice “MINT...chocolate chip”, putting a dramatic pause between ‘mint’ and ‘chocolate’, just to let the enormity of the words sink in a little more.

Like one does between ‘THE’ and ‘OHIO’ when saying ‘THE...Ohio State University.’

“So I bounced out there to give him his keys, and I tell him that I wasn’t gonna charge Kirk Cousins a penny for fixing his van, that it was my pleasure. And that’s when his face changed. The smile disappears, he drops his ice cream in the garbage can and he leans in with that perfect granite jaw of his and says in the most chilling voice I’ve ever heard not to tell a soul, or I’d regret it.”

Bob’s voice and demeanor changed now. Nervous, jittery, maybe a bit unsteady. If he hadn’t been sitting down I think he would have fainted. But he continued on.

“So I said okay, and I was sorry that I had apparently upset him. He stared at me for a good 20 seconds and said ‘not a soul, Bob’, and was gone. I was kind of freaked out about it, but I just figured Kirk didn’t want anyone to know he drives a conversion van. I don’t know why, because it’s a perfectly fine vehicle, but hey, I get it. Within a couple minutes I was over it, as other customers came in, and by the end of the day I had pretty much forgotten it, went home, and didn’t think anything would come of it.”

But Bob was wrong.

“So I come in here the next morning, and there’s a box sitting in front of the door. Plain brown, wrapped impeccably, perfect corners on the brown wrapping paper. At the top is just printed ny name ‘BOB’, in all capital letters. I thought it was weird, but I took the box into my office here with the rest of the mail, opened it up, and...well...”

Bob was on the verge of tears, as he reached under his desk and pulled a box out from underneath it. Motioning me to look, I felt fear grip me in a way I haven’t felt since I was scheduled for a colonoscopy. Like really, All of THAT is going up WHERE?

Summoning every ounce of courage I could muster, I looked. Inside the box was a Mento and an empty two liter bottle of Cherry Coke. The message was unmistakable.

“That’s right”, Bob said, as if finishing my thought, “if I said anything, he was going to frame me for what happened in East Lansing that night. But I can’t keep silent any longer. My life doesn’t matter, this is too important. You must tell everyone, before it’s too late. Go, go now before he finds out.”

I quickly thanked Bob and got in my car, driving home at a rate of speed that far exceeds the speed limit Kirk Cousins wants us to believe he drives at all times. The drive home was a blur, and it was late afternoon as I pulled in to my driveway. I grabbed my bag and walked to the front door, happy to be home, but still unsettled by what I had seen and heard. As I was reaching for my keys, I noticed something on my porch. I looked, and I dropped my bag and walked over to the edge of my porch, fear beginning to overtake my body with each step.

There, sitting on my small table, was a single roll of toilet paper. I grabbed it, and written on it, in perfect penmanship were:

GO GREEN, GO WHITE

I quickly unlocked the door, rushed inside, and deadbolted the door behind me. I frantically fumbled for my phone and called the police. When they arrived, they dismissed my story out of hand.

“Kirk Cousins, a sense of humor and a personality? You sure you haven’t been drinkin’, buddy? Any history of mental illness in your family?”

They took down my statement anyway, although I could tell they didn’t believe a word I told them. After they left, I headed upstairs and collapsed in to bed, physically and mentally exhausted.

I was just about asleep when my doorbell rang seven or eight times, and I heard footsteps running away, then the unmistakable sound of a conversion van starting and driving away at 31 mph.

It was 10:03. And the speed limit in my neighborhood is 25.

He’s found me. It’s over.