Monday, December 14, 2009

S.P.O.A.


I was doing some laundry on Saturday night when
my friend, Candy, stopped by and handed me a few
stickers. I had completely forgotten that she
had told me a while back that she was planning to
have these made. In fact, she had at one time
thought about using my flag (the flag of the
Antarctic Vexillological Association) as the flag
on her sticker, but decided it needed to unmistakably
show the continent of Antarctica on it, so decided
against it. What she had given me was a sticker for
the S.P.O.A. (Short People Of Antarctica). 62 inches
and under, under 62 degrees (latitude) South).
An awesomely ingenious and funny little group.
Ironically, I'm too tall for the group, standing at
64 inches, but I think I'm a member by being "close
enough". I asked Candy later, to tell me all of
the details of her group and how it (and her sticker)
came about:

"The sticker....
Well, first the name...
A few seasons back there were a number of short ladies
that were talking about all the short people on station,
we said "We should make a club and a t-shirt!" And our
acronym became SPOA. ...it got me to thinking....about
a sticker. And so I was trying to think up different
things for the sticker and I was doing a pass down to
someone here at work so I could go to lunch, he saw my
scribblings and asked me what it was all about. He's
a very tall guy, over 6'3" I think.... well, I went
to lunch and when I came back he had a sketch of the
Marines Memorial about Iwo Jima and a few figures and
the penguin being the tallest down on a piece of scrap
paper. I thought it was hilarious. So I drew up what
you see on the sticker and added the catch phrase (that
was easy...). I wanted to make it for all of Antarctica
because there are lots of shorties at WAIS, Pole, not sure
about Palmer. So I have the green Polie jacket, our big
red jacket, and an orange/black jacket that works for
both Scott Base and Palmer (float coats).
I saw the full color BFC stickers and asked Jessy where
she got them made and sent my design in to the same
company, talked to a great customer service rep and a
few weeks later, had the stickers to give away!!"


And that's the ... short ... story.

1 comment:

IowaMouse said...

I soooo have to have one of these! Where can I get one????