Lighter thoughts

I have a tendency to only write about things that I have a burning desire to get off my chest. By nature, I think that tends to be things of a serious nature. Let's see, I've covered off the top of my head:

• dating situations and the changing status's thereof
• a host of anti Bushisms
• rants about issues of pop culture
• the death of my Mom
• living wills and the right to die
• vociferous rants about sports figures and fans

With subjects like that, you'd think I was an entirely serious person. I'm really not though. I'm crazy. I'm a schemer for good practical jokes. I get it from my Mom. Since I talked about her in such a serious situation regarding her death in the context of the "right to die" rant I had, I want to pay tribute to her a bit so you can see how I became so weird.

Succinctly, here are my Mom's favorite stunts:

• She was Asst Vice President of a bank. This meant she had keys to everything. She got up extra early one morning years ago, went to the bank, and hid herself in the vault. She then jumped out at co workers when they got into work.
• She faked a crying fit to my poor gullible grandma in the doctor's office waiting room. My grandmother was at the doctor for a routine checkup and lots of people were there. My mom bored easily. So she used her talent to cry at will.. When my poor little horrified grandmother reached over and said "honey, whatever is wrong?", my mom cried louder and said "I just want you to tell me who my daddy is, do you know?". The waiting room just about erupted in laughter realizing the stunt, but my grandma was horrified; she thought that people believed it. My mom was about 40 at the time and my grandma was 81.
• We bought a new convertible when I was a little kid. We took it to my grandmothers house and parked it in the carport with the top down. It started raining and my grandmother said "how will we get back to your house?" She was coming to stay with us. Well, my mom immediately realized that grandma did not understand that convertibles have a top that goes up, so she starting crying at will again. Grandma ran off to her bedroom with my mom starting to snicker and returned with 4 umbrella's thinking we'd drive 15 miles back to our house in the rain holding umbrella's in the car. Grandma was a sweet southern belle, but worldly knowledge was not her thing, and thus made her the target of my mom for fun.

Some of my stunts that I've pulled are:

• I used to cook chocolate chip cookies from scratch all the time. Problem is, my brother would always come in and eat them all. I got irritated and thought to myself, "I'll fix that". I made a batch of them with exlax instead of chocolate chips. Well, wouldn't you know that my brother for the first time ever didn't want any. My mom ate a big plate of them though and missed work the next day with the runs. We didn't tell her about it until years later.
• My brother didn't escape the runs from me on another occasion though. We started a road trip once to Florida to our condo in the redneck riviera. Chiclets gum was popular at the time. I bought a pack of them and dumped all the Chiclets out and replaced them with Grandma's Feenamints. They looked the same if you don't know what they are, but are actually a laxative gum. Anyway, I had fun with it until I realized it would make us stop at every exit across Mississippi , thus keeping me off the beach that much longer.
• They didn't all backfire though. My favorite one against my brother was when we were both little. I was 15 and he was 11 or so. We had watched "The Exorcist" and neither of us were sleeping well frankly. My brother was 4 yrs younger and very wound up, he slept with me in my room unbeknownst to my parents for 2 weeks; that was me being a good brother. But on his first night to stay in his room, I plotted. I knew he was trying hard to stay in his room and move on from the green head spinner in the Exorcist. I waited till about 3 in the morning; I heard him head for the bathroom. I snuck into his room and got under the bed; then I just waited. I let him get in his bed and waited a few minutes, then I added some very subtle sound effects. First there was breathing, then I'd stop when I was sure he'd heard it. Hollywood has nothing on me in the creepy department ya know. Then I waited a bit longer and lightly whispered "michael.......", well, I let this go on for 15 minutes or so of torture with him petrified in his bed, and then I reached up over the bed and grabbed him and in my best Freddy Krueger said "MICHAEL". He bolted from the bed screaming at the top of his lungs. My parents came running in thinking someone had died. Well, I didn't care how much trouble I was in; I could simply not stop laughing. Ultmately, the laughing was contagious and my mom and dad started laughing after being very angry. This just served to make my brother jump up and down and scream "i hate you, i hate you i hate you, over and over again.
• At work, I waited on a female I work with to leave her desk. She did not close her computer down, so I decided to send off a few emails from her email address. She's engaged to be married few months at this point, so I sent off an email to a male co worker that I know well saying "if things don't work out with my fiance, would you consider a no strings hook up?, I'm going to need it badly." In a second email, I shot off a note to other female co workers titled "please help". In the body I explained that I was "dying here" as "I had a very uncomfortable yeast infection, do you have anything I could use?" Needless to say when she sat down she was getting some interesting replies to her requests.