Blowup doll stands in for deployed boyfriend

NWF Daily News ^ | 11/14/2009 | Katie Tammen

[Saije]

She wanted to give him a glimpse of home.

Lesan Gouge’s plan was to snap pictures of herself at various locations in Destin, and send them to her boyfriend Jeff who is deployed.

Then, her innate sense of humor took hold and “Replacement Jeff” joined her in the photographs.

Replacement Jeff is a “high class” blowup doll, dressed in shorts, a striped shirt and a baseball cap. At about five-feet-tall with a painted on mustache, Replacement Jeff doesn’t resemble the real Jeff, but he’s great for the photographs.

“This one is so quiet,” Gouge said of the doll with a laugh. “He’s a good listener, and he doesn’t say anything back… he’s awesome - he’ll go anywhere you want him to go.”

The duo have posed together once a day since the real Jeff left. The pictures show them in a variety of locations including outside the grocery store with Replacement Jeff sitting in the cart, kayaking (Replacement Jeff was strapped in) and out to dinner.

“I started thinking about what it must be like when you’re half a world away from home, over the holidays especially,” Gouge said. “I thought how nice it would be to have a certain place at home to think about every day. So, I decided to make ‘Replacement Jeff’ so that I could take him places, take pictures, and then let ‘Real Jeff’ have that hometown experience.”

Gouge said she has earned her fair share of strange looks when she brings out Replacement Jeff, but said once people hear why she’s doing it they appreciate what she’s doing and sometimes jump into the pictures with them.

As for Jeff, Gouge said, he had no idea she was doing it until he received a month’s worth of photographs in the mail.

[USMCPOP]

Offhand, I couldn’t find the pic with the doll on patrol in the desert in the gunner’s turret of the 7-ton truck, LOL.

I believe that pic was taken at Haditha Dam. Boys just wanna have fun.

[Tainan]

If this was a guy doing this with a female blow-up doll I am pretty sure the reactions would be very different.

[garjog]

Solution: develop surrogate technology. Her deployed boyfriend just plugs into an interface with a robot body back home.