Nobody shall ever forget Creepy Danny. So named, because some of the girls at the store were really creeped out by him. Me, I think he was harmless albeit annoying as hell. Sometimes, I wonder how people like Creepy Danny managed to function (feed, clothe themselves) on a daily basis.

Creepy Danny was this short little guy who somewhat resembled a human troll. He seemed…not right in the head. He had a high, whispery voice with a lisp and stutter, and tended to repeat the same question over and over again in the same breath. And he liked Spice Girls, a lot.

“D-d-d-do you have Spice Girls? Do you have Spice Girls?”

Once you’d show him Spice Girls, the next inevitable questions were (not necessarily in this order):

“D-d-d-do you like Spice Girls? I like Geri. Do you like Spice Girls? Do you like Geri? I like Geri best. Then Scary, Baby, Posh and Sporty. Do you like Spice Girls?  Have you seen the v-v-v-video for ‘Spice Up Your Life’?  P-p-people of the world! Spice up your life!”

There was no stopping Creepy Danny when he was on about Spice Girl.

“I heard th-th-th-that Geri quit Spice Girls. Is that true, is that true?”

He was indeed crushed when I told him that Ginger was no longer a Spice Girl.

However, it wasn’t many months before he started asking the next, inevitable question:

“D-d-d-do you have the new CD by G-G-G-Geri Halliwell? D-d-do you have Geri Halliwell?”

I think I sold about 3 copies of that album in total by the way.

But he was harmless. He just took a lot of babysitting, and time out of your day, and two Advil.

The phone would ring. I’d hear that high stuttering voice. “D-d-d-do you have Backstreet Boys?” Sometimes, I would hand the phone over to someone else. “Brad, it’s for you.” And then hand him off to Creepy Danny.

I have a theory about Creepy Danny.

He was simply too bizarre to have been a real persona. In all my years at the store, I have never met anyone as purely strange yet functional as Creepy Danny. I believe that Creepy Danny was actually a University Sociology masters student, and it was a persona he adopted in public as some sort of elaborate social experiment, to see how people treat those who are different.

I imagined a scenario where I might catch Creepy Danny out of character. I imagined that one night, I would be out for a nice expensive dinner at Charcoal Steakhouse. I would be there with a girl, and at the next candlelit table, there is Danny, with a knock-out babe. He pours the wine. He catches a glimpse of me. A glimmer of recognition. Suddenly, he reverts back to character! “D-d-d-do you like Spice Girls?”

That’s the way I imagined it unfolding. My theory was never proven, nor disproven. But in my mind, a character as weird as Danny was simply had to be cooked up by a student. There’s no other way!