Well he’s really a cutout of her real life boyfriend, Staff Sgt. Patrick Thoms, who’s currently stationed in Iraq wit the U.S. Air Force and has been there for two months.
The muscular cutout is the pivotal piece of project “Perk up Patrick,” an effort by family and friends to keep the freedom fighter connected and to live vicariously off of while he’s sweating in the desert.
Originally beginning as a joke, Anne now carries her cardboard cutout boyfriend everywhere she goes, snapping photographs of their escapades and sending it back to Thomas.
“He doesn’t talk back, he doesn’t argue,” she joked about what we believe will only be her temporary cardboard boyfriend.
“There are a couple of people who kind of gave us the stink eye, like, ‘Eww, what are you doing?'”