“Does this suit make me look fat?” I jokingly asked, striking a Marilyn Monroe-esque pose.
“The cow is not supposed to talk,” Jeanie whispered. “And you’re a cow, so yes you look fat.” I turned to look at my reflection in the restaurant window. Instead of my usual frizzy brown-haired and high school senior self staring back at me, there was a cow—a seven-foot Chick-Fil-A cow, sporting an XXXL t-shirt with the words “Eat Mor Chikin” on the front and back.
Jeanie took me by my cow-mittened hand and walked me out to the dining area—a little mingling with the customers was customary before heading out to the street corner. I always found close encounters with the customers to be the most stressful part of being a Chick-Fil-A cow. Not all kids run with open arms to embrace the large fuzzy cow; a healthy number bury their faces in mom’s shirts, crying and screaming as if I would pass on mad cow disease. There must be a risk for lawsuit in relation to those issues becaus my boss would always stress caution among children.
When kids weren’t running away screaming, they pulled on my tail, hugged my leg, held my hand—parents love to take pictures of their kids with the cow. Everyone crowds around the cow, and the camera goes up. The photographer instructs, “Cheeeeese.” The first night I wore the cow suit, it wasn’t until about the fifth picture I realized: they can’t see me smile.
Four components made up the cow suit. The cow head was rather large—the size of, well, an actual cow’s head—and it was fixed on a base looking and intending to be worn like football shoulder pads. The wearer’s eyelevel came at the cow’s snout level, where there was mesh to allow for limited viewing of the world outside the suit. I could tilt my head back a little bit and look up into the cow head. There dangled a mini fan, much like the handheld ones you’d see moms holding at soccer games. You get used to the constant whirr of it after about 5 minutes.
Next came the body suit. Akin to a fleece footy pajama—but much heavier and more suffocating—this was pulled on with the help of a partner because of a back zipper and the limited range of motion caused by the shoulder pads. Us first shift-ers were coveted because second shift cows had to endure a suit dampened by the sweat of the first. You don’t even want to think about third shift.
Fuzzy cow gloves and furry over-sized cow slip-on shoes finished off the look. The gloves only had four fingers. I never understood this, and my five-fingered hands didn’t appreciate it.
Due to potential health hazards in the cow suit—mostly dehydration and claustrophobia-induced insanity common in amateurs—shifts in the suit were limited to thirty minutes. On the 355 particularly warm days out of the year in Southern California, an ice vest was added to the get-up. This keeps the body’s core temp at a non-lethal level and reduces the amount of sweat released from two gallons to one. And the cow always travels with a partner. That first day, mine was Jeanie.
“Hi cow! Hi cow!” Typically an insult, “Hi cow!’ was the standard greeting from six- to ten-year-olds, and it quickly melted my soul. As did the little girl who pressed my paw to her face and looked up into my eyes: “I love you cow.” When she released my paw, I moved quickly to wipe a tear from my eye. The tear fell untouched, the cow head preventing my actual hand from making contact with my actual face. I must have looked as if I were saluting my audience.
My time in the restaurant ended quickly, and Jeanie led me out to the street corner—Gridley and South, one of the busier corners in Cerritos. As I fumbled in my cow shoes and alternated my entire body from side to side in order to manage the limited peripherals, I realized why partners were important. If a cow fell, there would be no getting up without help.
“Do your thing,” Jeanie spoke under her breath. She seemed embarrassed, but I think she was jealous. I was the one with the hidden identity, and it’s amazing what one can do with a hidden identity. At that moment, I discovered what I like to call my inner cow.
Inner cow was capable of dance moves that I, my bovine-less self, was not: line dancing, thriller, break dancing, disco. They honked—I’d do the moonwalk. They waved—I’d give them the chicken dance. Then it was interpretive dance, ballet, Macarena, can-can. If you can think of it, I probably tried it in that 30-minute time span.
I like to believe that my dancing was awakening the desire for chicken sandwiches in those driving by. Half of me expected to see cars slamming on their breaks, making a quick u-turn and heading in to the restaurant. I could picture a “Cow of the Month” award because I was boosting sales.
But there wasn’t a lot of that. There was more honking. And little kids with their faces pressed against the car windows or sticking their hands out the window to wave.
The suit fit me well. It awakened something in me that didn’t care what people saw. Having a hidden identity was thrilling. If I could arrange it, I would make sure that every person could spend 30 minutes in a cow suit on a street corner.
I wasn’t ready to go in, and I wasn’t overheating just yet, but my shift was up. Jeanie took my hand and led me back to the restaurant. Again I was smiling, and though Jeanie couldn’t see my face, I think she knew: “You enjoy this too much.”
