Happy Birthday Rod!

In honor of my brother Rod's birthday, I feel I should tell you childhood stories. I'm torn because there are some darn good ones. It's amazing my mother didn't have a heart attack from the things we did. She did get an ulcer, but I blame my dad for that one.

We only had about an hour between when we got out of school and when my mom got home from work. We were industrious children -- not really overachievers, but certainly not slackers -- so it was plenty of time to come up with something and then execute it on a regular basis. My mom would arrive home just in time to see the fruits of our efforts (and potentially save our lives or limbs if that was required).

Should I tell you the story about the time we dragged all the mattresses in the house on the front lawn so it would be "safe" to jump off the roof? My poor mother turned the corner onto our street just as the first kid jumped. Needless to say the rest of us didn't get a turn.

There's the time Rod jammed a tire iron through the middle of the door that connected the house to the garage. Then we hid it from my parents for the next 10 years (Ask Rod. It's true.)

Or the time Rod threw a match into a soda can filled with gas and water and then threw it into the garage. For some reason, I didn't think we needed to call the fire department on that one. 

"Fill this bucket in the tub. We can put it out."

Or there's the time Rod scared me so bad I couldn't stop screaming and the neighbors came over because they thought I was being bludgeoned to death.

That is a good story. It reveals Rod's stealth, cunning and cruel, cruel black heart (love you!).

Rod snuck into my bedroom and creeped under my bed before bedtime. I don't know how long he had to wait there, but he did, just waiting to torture his sister.

Now, I watched way too many of those afternoon movies in my childhood. One of them was the chiller thriller "Don't be afraid of the dark." Well, that just makes you afraid of the dark. It was creepy to a kid -- these creatures that lived in the furnace and came out only in the dark and tried to drag you down into the abyss with them. I can still see the lady grab a camera and try to use the flash to scare them off... I'm still creeped out about it.

So black-hearted Rod's waiting there under the bed as I crawl in (when Rod reads this, he'll still be giggling and pleased with himself). I pull up the covers and the bed moves ever so slightly. "Nah, that's just my imagination," I tell myself.

The bed moves slightly again. "Nah...."

I try to read my book. The bed moves again. My blood runs cold. Terror fills my heart.  "Mom?" I can barely get it out....

That's when Rod pushes his feet against the bottom of the bed as hard as he can and the bed is bouncing and flying around like crazy -- AND HE DOESN'T STOP. He just keep bouncing the bed around. I am screaming and screaming and screaming....

My parents come flying into the room. Rod has rolled out from under the bed barely breathing because he is laughing so hard, and I'm standing in the room screaming and screaming and screaming. I can't stop.

The neighbors come over because of all the screaming. It took awhile to calm me down. I even remember Rod trying to calm me down. He had probably reached that point that we all do at different times in childhood ("Oh. I've gone tooo far on this one.").

I'm not really scarred by the episode. I just check under the bed regularly and everything is OK...