Social Graces

As of late, I've been incredibly confused as to what it was I had been feeling.  I was silently and viciously attacked without my knowledge, and I refused to show anger over it.  For that I was accused of being a sociopath, to which anyone out there who has ever dared to read my blogs would know that to be incredibly false. Anyone who's ever known me in person would know that wasn't true.  I'm filled with deep emotions that I must try to control lest they control me.  I just know not to get angry over petty things because it doesn't do anyone any good.

I've learned a lot since moving to California in 2002.


1.  Nice towels are worth spending a few extra dollars on.
2.  People only want to know you if you can do something for them.
3.  A drive along the coast will cure just about anything.
4.  Traveling is worth every cent we can afford to spend on it.
5.  Life is lived outside of four walls and two rooms.
5.  Everything out here is measured in time, not miles.
6.  There's not a person in the world who won't lie to your face.


Social graces within the workplace dictate that names shall not be named.  I am personally guilty of that action, and for that action alone, I apologize.  I apologize to my boss.  I apologize to his wonderful wife. I apologize to those people I named. HOWEVER - what I told was true so I will not apologize for having said it.

As several people lately will attest to, when I have a problem with someone in particular, I go directly to them - not to everyone around them, people who know them, neighbors, roommates and total strangers.  Those would be the actions of a coward - someone who feels it's necessary to hide within the shadows.  I'm not a shadow dweller.

After posting a blog recently, I was accused of being extremely egotistical by someone who claimed to not know me and refused to put anything but "Anonymous" for their name.  To clear THAT one up, I never said that everyone in the world wanted to BE me.  What I said - if you can understand plain English please feel free to go back and read it again here... - was that I've known so few people who actually loved me.  People who claimed to love me were actually obsessive people.  I draw them to me like flies.  They don't realize they are obsessed with me, and perhaps they aren't at first, but that turns out to be the case.  Not every one of them want to BE me, but what I said was "People wanted to be with me, be like me, be around me or just BE me."  I stand by that.  Now - stop posting anonymously and your comments might actually be posted.  *wink*

Those who obsess over others usually do for those reasons - am I wrong?

So I'll leave you with these final thoughts on the matter before I get back to writing about my regular program of stories, travel adventures, upcoming excitement and joyful times...

Don't obsess over others.  It leads to no good.

When you break social graces, it's ok to apologize.

Any time I have a problem with someone, I go to them. If you don't hear it from me, I don't have a problem with you.

And finally - Life is too short to spend time with people who suck the happiness out of you.  They aren't worth the time, so why give it to them?  People, it's time to move on.

Sugar Bowl

In a story written towards the beginning of the 365 project, I mentioned how I had put salt in the sugar bowl intended for my brother. He and I used to play pranks on one another all the time as kids, and that was just another one of the many. Unfortunately I didn't get him. Instead, I got Dear Old Dad.

It was one of the times my brother had pulled a really good unsuspecting prank on me. He snuck into my room and took every shoe I owned for my right foot. All I was left with was a left shoe line up of mismatched misfits. I didn't say a word for a full day, and instead wore a left shoe on my right foot that looked somewhat similar to the one I paired it with. My aching feet at the end of the school day almost didn't take me home on that long walk. I think I ended up barefoot towards the end.

It was such a good prank he had pulled on me that I had to really think hard to come up with one to match his prowess. I had taught him well, he was getting quite good at the pranks. The week before he had successfully placed a cup of water over my bedroom door frame that soaked me to the core when I opened my door. It was time for a little revenge.

I worked hard to get him back for that one. I tried to put vinegar in his soda, but he knew right off hand what I had done by the smell. I put melted wax in his tooth brush, but a little hot water fixed that one. I even tried to hide his baseball cards, but he found where I had stashed them. Finally, I had a stroke of genius.

On the weekends, if Mom wasn't around, we would sneak sugar into our cereal bowls for our really very plain Cheerio's. All I had to do was come up with some way to sabotage the sugar bowl to get him back and he'd do it to himself!

I woke up around 2am that Friday night and snuck stealthily down the stairs. I took two big spoons full of sugar out of the bowl, dumped them directly into my mouth, and crunched away. I swallowed every bit of that sugar. I didn't want to take a chance on dropping any on the floor and raising suspicion. I was going to really get him this time.

Next I picked up the tall Tupperware salt shaker and held it upside down over the sugar bowl. The white granules sifted through the small holes in the plastic top and began to pour in a stream. There was a difference in the way the salt looked compared to the thin layer of sugar on the bottom though. I knew I would have to mix them to get the desired effect.

I nearly emptied the salt shaker into the sugar bowl, stopping at where I thought the level of the sugar had been to begin with. Then I took a spoon, stirred the contents just a bit, and left spoon dimples in the top so it would look perfectly normal. Immediately afterward I snuck back upstairs and climbed back into bed.

I slept in late the next morning. For some odd reason I had a hard time getting back to sleep that night. When I got up and went down stairs my parents were sitting there having a cup of coffee together.

"Manda," my dad got my attention, "would you like a cup of coffee?" My parents hardly ever let us drink coffee. It was a special treat for him to even think about offering it.

"Sure!" I grabbed the cup he offered to me, poured a full, steaming cup of Joe, and sat down with my parents to put my milk and Equal in it.

"Oh, it's ok," my Dad said. "You can have some real sugar today. Here, use my spoon."

I sat down and the smile melted off of my face. I knew right then that I should say I was sorry, but something held me back.

"Go ahead," Mom said, smiling at me. It was obvious to me they both knew. They wouldn't have ever offered me real sugar otherwise.

I swallowed my pride, though it tasted much worse than the sugar did during the previous nights escapades. I took two heaping spoons full of the white granular cocktail and put them straight into my coffee and stirred.

"Drink it," my father prompted me. I lifted the cup and took a tiny sip. "No, that's not drinking it. I want you to take a good taste." I drank a bit more.

My face wrinkled up into a prune. I grimaced and swallowed, hard. That actually tasted worse than swallowing my pride. It went down in a hot, nasty, salty lump.

"The difference," my father explained, "is that you knew it was coming. I spit all the way across the table and stained the walls. Your mother had to clean it up. You're lucky it was me and not her." He laughed gently. "You were trying to get your brother, weren't you?"

"Yeah," I said, still trying to swallow the nasty taste clinging to my tonsils. I gagged.

"Well, nice try." He smirked. "Go get yourself a fresh cup." Much to my amazement, they still let me have my cup of coffee, this time with Equal instead of 'sugar' from the bowl.

My parents didn't have much patience with us growing up, but the times that they did live on in my memory far stronger than the times they didn't.

Wired Shut

While I was White Water Rafting down the middle of the Colorado River, my mother was getting surgery on her jaw. I wasn't there for the surgery so I don't know what the rest of the family was going through - only what happened once I got back. It's a memory I had forgotten long ago until my memory was jogged while writing my story about the White Water Weggie.

Dad had to do all the cooking in the house for a while. Mom was on some incredibly strong pain killers. Her jaw had been broken in two places and moved forward a quarter of an inch on both sides. The doctors said her lower jaw had stopped growing when she was about 7 years old. The surgery was necessary.

She was on a liquid diet while the wires held her jaws clamped together. She could barely mumble out the words she wanted to say, and for the first few days upon my return she had to write everything down on a notebook and have us read it. This was more than unpleasant for her. She was miserable. Even her liquid diet had to be taken with a syringe. I won't go into details about how it operated, but everything had to somehow end up behind her wired teeth.

Laughing, or even smiling, was incredibly painful for her. She smiled quite often when I was young. She still loves to laugh. This was one of the hardest tasks bestowed upon the family, not to say or do anything funny around her for a total of 6 weeks. When a family is as strange and funny as mine is, I'm sure you can imagine how often we had to walk away from her in order to stop from causing her pain at something we had thought of or wanted to say.

We all pitched in around the house. My brother and I did the laundry (except the unmentionables they hid in the bedroom until Dad had a chance to take care of them), we would cook on the occasion Dad was gone and it was just us taking care of her, but most of the time he did the cooking while she was laid up. We would get her books from the book shelf, fetch the TV remote, grab fresh pillows and blankets and just take care of her the best we could. After all, she had always done that for us when we were sick.

Mom was in the living room one day when I started to hear this gurgling scream coming from the back of her throat. I was standing in the kitchen at the time getting her a drink. I had no idea what was going on, but I went charging into the living room, full steam ahead. She sat there with tears rolling down her face holding her jaw on both sides.

"TRN IT UFF!" She screamed at me behind clenched jaws. "Trn it uff! Trn it uff!" She screamed over and over, trying to kick the TV remote over to me. She was sobbing!

Without even noticing what it was she had been watching, I switched the TV off as quickly as possible and sat down at her feet, wanting more than anything to make her feel better. She was obviously in agony.

Suddenly her eyes lit up and she giggled. That made her scream again and the tears once more rolled down her cheeks. Then she giggled again, which made her cry again. It was a wicked cycle she went through for a good ten minutes. It wasn't funny, and I hated seeing my mother in pain, but her occasional giggles made me want to giggle, which I knew would be even worse because everyone knows giggles are infectious. Finally I had to excuse myself and walk back into the other room. There, I burried my face in a hand towel and giggled to my hearts content. By the time I went back into the room, she was doing much better. She looked up at me and whimpered "I'm sorry," as best she could through the mesh in her teeth.

"What happened?" I asked innocently enough. I shouldn't have. At the mere thought of whatever it was, she giggled again and the whole viscious cycle repeated once more.

Weeks after the brutal mess was taken out of her mouth, she told me what had made her laugh so hard that day.

"Manda, you know how I don't like vulgar comedians?"

"Yeah," I said, knowing even the "S" word or using the word Hell too often would drive her insane.

"What I was watching that day was by accident. I was flipping through the channels and I came across this comedian talking about how he once knew a guy who had all of his fingers on both hands cut off in a saw mill accident."

"Well that doesn't sound funny at all!"

"He said that the guy took up being a thief because he couldn't find a job since all he had were two thumbs. He said the guy would steal donuts all the time." She mimicked the action he would have needed to use by holding her thumb up in the air, stabbing through the center hole of an imaginary donut and holding it proudly over her head." Finally he stole donuts from a shop that all the cops ate at all the time, and it made them all mad so they arrested him.

"Well, he decided later on that he was going to clean up his act and go straight. The problem was that he still couldn't find work with only two thumbs. He couldn't dig ditches or type or do anything for anyone without fingers. Frustrated, he decided he'd start over in another town. Without fingers though, he couldn't grab a steering wheel and so he couldn't drive. Instead, he decided to take up hitchiking."

At this point I was already grinning ear to ear over her hand movements describing the donut thief. While continuing the story, she had carefully folded all of her fingers inward, making sure to poke ther thumbs out as far as possible. She looked like Fonzy from Happy Days. Suddenly she started laughing hysterically.

"Hitchiking?" I asked.

"Yeah - he was great at flagging down the cars with that thumb sticking out" she waved her hand through the air again mimicking the actions needed, including stabbing at an imaginary door handle with her thumb, "but once they got pulled over he couldn't get the car doors open! Finally he got frustrated and yelled at them 'Oh Hell, just go on!'"

My mother roared, and her laughter made me light up as bright as a Christmas tree. I laughed right along beside her. I always loved to hear her laugh.

She swore that day she would find out who that comedian was so she could watch the show again, but try as I might I can't seem to find it anywhere on the internet, to purchase or watch on Youtube. I can't help but think that would have been a great birthday gift for her this year.

If anyone out there has any
information on the comedian
I'm talking about, please
contact me with a link - either
on facebook or by leaving a
comment below. Any and all
help is greatly appreciated.

The Rabbit Grass Patch

In the beginning of the 6th grade, I was a bit of a loner. That all changed later on in the year, but that's another story.

Rashaad Sampson used to pick on me out in the school yard. I would find a quiet spot in the back corner of the playground when I retired from the Bars and would sit on a very soft patch of grass I called Rabbit Grass, since it felt to me like a bunny's back. Eventually I made a friend though, and Megan McKinley would sit under the same tree with me.

Kristen Osterthalen had written a play that the class would be performing later on that year. Inspired by her and my own desire to write, Megan and I decided to write a play of our own. We would sit in the back of the playground on that patch of Rabbit Grass and write. We would talk for the entire recess about what we wanted to write into our play.

Rashaad found us back there one day and asked what we were doing. Neither of us wanted to answer, so we ignored him for a while. Eventually he was the reason Megan and I developed our own version of sign language. We had hand signals for everything. We even created our own written language thanks to a class assignment that blossomed for us. For years I could read and write fluently in that private language. Though I would struggle with a couple of the letters now, I still have most of the memorized.

Rashaad started picking handfuls of my Rabbit Grass and throwing them at us. He was tired of being ignored. He chanted at us about what big nerds we were to have our own language. He teased us until we couldn't ignore him anymore. Back then I never stood up for myself (some things never change) so Megan did. As I sat there picking my precious grass out of my long hair, Megan stood up and told Rashaad off. She told him that he needed to leave us alone, we weren't bothering him, and surely a kid of 5'10 in the 6th grade had better things to do with his time, like pick apples without a ladder.

What Rashaad didn't know was that secretly I had a crush on him. I had long since forgotten about Mike from the 5th grade after playing Blind Man's Bluff with him. I was far more crushed than I let on.

When I got home from school that day I started to tell my Mom all about how Rashaad had thrown grass at me. I was so upset that I started to cry and couldn't get the word "grass" to come out of my mouth through the sobs.

" Rashaad was so mean to me! He.... (sob) was thr... (sob) thr... throwing .... (sob) Grass at me!"

My mother started to laugh at me, to which I cried harder. It wasn't funny at all! He had really hurt my very delicate feelings! Still, she saw humor in there somewhere. Her next remark really blew me away.

"Don't worry, Honey... when he gets to know you better, he'll throw rocks!"

Camp Thousand Pines

I think I was in the 5th grade when I went to Camp Thousand Pines for the first time. I remember pulling up in the bus and having all the girls in one group, the boys in the other. It had been a hard year in school for me that year, having just lost my best friend, Louise Pritchard, when she moved away. I've never stopped looking for her.

The bus pulled up in one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. Little cabins were dotted through the woods with a central hall in the dead center of it all. The kids all piled out and began to scatter in multiple directions before one of the teachers bellowed for them all to freeze where they were and reassemble by the bus.

One by one we received cabin assignments. There was a teacher or parent in each cabin, but that didn't stop the girls from giggling and the boys from trying to pull practical jokes on one another at night. Parts of the trip turned out like the practical joke events in the original "Parent Trap" movie.

We went on night hikes. We met the local Native American tribe and they came to teach us how to do the traditional Rain Dance. I discovered my allergic reaction to bees. I had a metal ladder fall on my leg and sprain my ankle and we all took turns in the kitchen preparing a meal for the other kids before taking any food for ourselves. We even learned how to curl our hands and place our lips in the correct position in order to call the squirrels. I can actually still do it.

We told ghost stories out by the fire at night, roasted marshmallows over the open flames and enjoyed root beer floats while chatting about life in general. Though it seems as if Camp Thousand Pines has changed a lot since I was last there, my memories of the place before technology, live on just as they were.

Boo Hag - a Ghost Story.

You know how they say some folks are lucky at cards and some are lucky at love? Well, that fit Bobby Hansen to a ‘T’. He was the best poker player in the county, but somehow he couldn’t find himself a bride. Oh, he proposed to several girls, and even got accepted by a few. But they always got cold feet a day or two before the wedding, and it was bye-bye Bobby.

After the third time, Bobby was mighty discouraged, and his Pa felt real sore for him. They worked together in the family grocery store, and Bobby would sometimes sit on top of the pickle barrel and tell his Pa all his woes. And his Pa told him to hang in there, because a nice lady was on her way. Neither of them believed it, but it made both of them feel better to hear it said. Well, the day after their latest talk, the old woman who poled her barge through the swamp to deliver milk and eggs to the grocery store had a long talk with Bobby’s Pa. Seems she had this daughter who was hankering after a husband with a good steady job, and the old woman thought Bobby would do the job nicely. She suggested they introduce the pair at the next dance, and Bobby’s Pa agreed.

The night of the dance, Bobby’s Pa insisted that his son dress in his best. Bobby was dragging his feet a little, remembering all those women who played him false and not wanting to go, but his Pa dragged him out anyway. Well, the moment Bobby clapped eyes on the dark-eyed, red-lipped girl from the swamp, he was head over heels in love. Her eyes sparkled like the sunlight on the bay. Her skin was as creamy as new milk. Her voice was low and sweet.

The pair cuddled and cooed and waltzed the whole night long, and come sunrise Bobby was all for bringing his new love before the visiting priest who delivered his sermons in the grocery store (since there weren’t no church in that vicinity) and getting married right away. Well the girl was willing to get married, but not by a priest.

“Let’s just go to Beaumont and have the judge marry us,” she said to Bobby, and he was so smitten he agreed, though it would have been quicker and easier to just walk a mile down the road to see the priest.

By the next evening they were wed, and Bobby brought his pretty bride to the nice little cottage he rented just down the road from the family grocery. It had a nice front porch with a swing, a big bedroom on the second floor and a big attic with a window that could be made up into a second guestroom should his new mother-in-law care to visit from her home in the swamp.

After fixing him a nice dinner, Bobby’s new bride sat awhile in the rocking chair near their bed while Bobby yawned and watched her fondly. She cuddled under the blanket and knitted and hummed, and Bobby’s eyes grew heavy. He didn’t wake up until early morning, when his new bride crept into bed all hot and sweaty and fell asleep at once. When he asked her where she’d been, she wouldn’t answer him. Bobby was mighty sore that his bride had snuck out on him on their wedding night, but when she got snappish and her eyes blazed like they did when he questioned her, he grew frightened and backed down.

Life took on an odd pattern for Bobby. During the day, everything was perfect. His wife was sweet and pretty and loving. She kept the house sparkling clean and cooked him wonderful meals. But each night she refused to come to bed after supper. Like their wedding night, she sat up singing and rocking and knitting until he was asleep and did not come to bed til just afore dawn. She was always sweaty and cranky when she came to bed, and went to sleep before Bobby could question her.

Bobby was very confused and upset by this behavior, and finally confided in his Pa one morning after opening up the grocery store. Bobby’s Pa was awful worried. The visiting priest had gone on to his next parish, and there was no one they could consult but the local conjure woman. So he sent Bobby to her with a couple of chickens as a gift.

The conjure woman knew all about hoodoo magic and was an excellent herbalist. Local folks went to her when they were sick, on account of the doctor lived nigh on twenty miles away. When she heard Bobby’s story, she told him to pretend to go to sleep that night and watch what his new bride did. Then he was to come back and tell her everything. Bobby agreed.

The next evening, he pretended to fall asleep while his bride rocked and sang in her chair. Then he followed her up to the attic and watched through the crack in the open door as she sat down at the spinning wheel and spun off her skin, leaving only pulsing red muscles and blue veins. She was a terrifying sight and she sprang through the window and flew away into the night. Bobby ran out to the privy and was sick after he saw her. Who, what was this monster he had married? He was still trembling and in shock when his bride, looking like a normal person again, crept into bed at dawn, and he had trouble behaving normally at breakfast.


Part 2: Video created by a Reader
As soon as he could get away, Bobby ran to the home of the conjure woman and told her about the spinning wheel and the terrible skinless creature who flew away from his attic. “A boo-hag,” the conjure woman said at once. “You’ve married a boo-hag.”

“What’s a boo-hag?” asked Bobby. “A Boo Hag is a witch and a shape-shifter,” said the conjure woman. “She lures men into her trap and then delivers them to her Boo-Daddy, who eats their flesh and gnaws their bones. And that’s what she’ll do to you if you don’t get rid of her first.”

The conjure woman told Bobby to get himself some blue paint. As soon as the boo-hag left the house that night, he was to spread blue paint on every window frame and every door frame and make sure it was two coats thick. A boo-hag couldn’t fly through a window or door that was painted blue. And if she didn’t get back into her skin before dawn, she would be trapped without it, and be revealed for the monster she was. So he was to leave one tiny window unpainted, and keep it open a sliver so the boo-hag could squeeze through. Then he was to fill up her skin with salt and pepper, which would burn her up from the inside out. And Bobby promised to do exactly as the conjure woman said.

That night, Bobby lingered over his dinner, looking with sad eyes at the pretty woman sitting opposite him. He knew she was really a monster inside, but it was so nice to have a little wife in his home. He hated like anything to see her go. But he didn’t want to get eaten by a Boo-Daddy, and that was his fate if she stayed. So he went up to their bedroom and pretended to fall asleep while she rocked and sang and knitted. Then he followed her quietly upstairs and put salt and pepper into her skin after her ugly red-muscled blue-veined figure had flown out the window to her Boo-Daddy. He spent the rest of the night painting over every door and window frame with blue paint, leaving only one small unpainted window open in the cellar. He nailed it up so that it would open no further than a crack, just as the conjure woman instructed him. Then he hid himself behind a large chest of drawers up in the attic to wait for the boo-hag.

Just before dawn, the boo-hag came flying up to the attic window. As soon as she touched the blue frame, she gave a shriek of pain and rage. Bobby listened as she flew around the house, testing each window and door and howling like a banshee when it burned her skinless hands. Then she found the little window in the cellar, and he heard the thump as she landed beside it, followed by a painful whimpering sound as she squeezed and squeezed herself through the narrow opening, her skinless red muscles and blue veins tearing painfully against the rough wood.

The boo-hag ran up three flights of stairs into the attic and squeezed and squeezed into her skin as fast as she could. She just barely got it on when the first light of dawn shone over the horizon. And that was when the salt and pepper did their work, burning the boo-hags body from the inside out. With a scream of agony, she flung herself out the attic window. The glass shattered everywhere as she tried to fly away, tearing at the skin to get it off. But it was too late. She exploded into tiny pieces right over the swamp, and the alligators had them a mighty feast of cooked boo-hag for breakfast that morning.

So Bobby was once again without a wife. But bachelorhood looked much better to him after that, and he never went looking for a wife again. ‘Course, after he made a pile of money in oil, the girls started chasing him. But that’s another story!

Childhood Pranks

My mind has been just reeling in excitement and energy because of a few conversations I had yesterday and today. Suddenly memories have been sparked within me that have caused me to do something I've not done in a very long time - take notes.

Yesterday I started a notebook of the stories I want to tell, things I've been reminded of, and things I think all of you, my friends and readers, would appreciate. I write them down with two or three words that will remind me of the entire story later on. More likely than not, these will end up being the titles to the blogs. So far, and this is no exaggeration, I have three and a half pages of JUST TITLES, just since yesterday!

One of my favorite memories was a moment of cruelty in my youth. Though I feel bad about it now, I will admit that I still laugh each time I tell this story. My brother doesn't laugh quite so much, though... It still brings back sour memories for him - literally.

I was rotten to him. For a year as children, he and I were very close. We lived at the end of a long dirt road with nothing and nobody around for a mile. When we moved to a more populated area, we made our own friends and moved on. That's when my mischevious side came out. I didn't exactly have a reason to cause him such grief, but I was certainly good at it.

The first time, all I did was put liquid soap in his toothbrush. I say "all I did was" because the story got better as time went.

He walked into the bathroom, picked up his toothbrush, put some toothpaste on the top, wet the toothpased top, and placed the toothbrush in his mouth. He began to scrub and then he froze. His face wrinkled up like an old mans as he stood looking in the mirror. He spat and sputtered and coughed and gagged and choked for a full 5 minutes before my mother came to see what was going on. I'll admit that I got a belt across my backside that night - fully deserved - but not until after both of my parents laughed so hard they had tears streaming down their faces. It was worth the spanking I got that week. I will fully agree that I deserved that one.

It was an ongoing prank from then on. We would do things to one another and not tell our parents. He tried to put soap in my tooth brush, but I rinsed out my brush before I ever put toothpaste near it. To this day I still do that. More often than not, it's completely instinctive.

My next trick was to not only put the soap in his toothbrush, but to take a thin layer on my finger and run it around the inside of his bathroom drinking cup. That way, if he discovered the soap in his toothbrush first, when he got done brushing and went to rinse, I still had him. That one worked, too. He gagged for a while, finally composed himself, and walked past my door glaring at me like he could have killed me easily in that instant.

He tried to set cups of water on the top of the door so they would fall on me when I opened the door. More often than not he ended up wiping up the water on the floor with a bath towel so Mom didn't find out. They nearly always missed me. Nearly.

My next stunt was to take wads of toilet paper and wet them in the sink. Then I would climb over the side of the tub and throw them straight up at the ceiling. They would stick there and linger, waiting for my brother to get in the shower. The steam from the warm shower would then heat the toilet paper wads, filling them with more moisture, and causing them to grow heavier. That's the way it worked in my mind, anyway. Unfortunately it didn't work, the wads never bombed him from above, and I moved on to the next project.

I had a few failures like that. I didn't realize that a person was supposed to remove the shampoo from the bottle before adding the "Nair" product or it would be too diluted to work. My brother still has a very full head of dark hair. The jar of dead bugs in his laundry basket didn't really work, either. The lid was on too tight to stink at all, and the only person who found it was my mother. She screamed at me for a while over that one.

The pranks went on for a while that way, back and forth, constantly trying to get one another. He would hide somewhere and scare me so bad I nearly peed my pants. I would get him back by putting salt in the sugar bowl for his cereal (and end up with it going into Dad's coffee). He would use a pink marker in Barbie's hair (I always hated pink), and I would hide his most prized comics or baseball cards. He would take all of my shoes and I would find another hiding spot for his porn collection.

One day I came home and heard everyone upstairs talking. It sounded like they were in the bathroom, but I hadn't put liquid soap in my brother's toothbrush for a week or more. I went upstairs, wondering what was going on.

"Manda, come here right now," my Mother's voice commanded. I knew I was in trouble, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out why. "Did you do that?"

She pointed at the ceiling over the shower. I had completely forgotten those dried up, crusty wads of previously wet toilet paper were up there. It had been more than a year since I had tossed those up, hoping to have them plop and splat on my brother's head durring a shower. I poked my head around the corner and smirked. My dad was standing there with a broom and it frightened me, thinking surely he would wallop me with it, but I couldn't help it. I broke into a grin and then a chuckle. My ever-so-stern father cracked too. He started to chuckle, my mom snorted, and I laughed so hard I hurt.

The crusty toilet paper had begun to mold slightly around the edges and nobody had noticed because my brother and I were the only two to use that bathroom. We were both fairly short back then. We didn't look up at the ceiling - why would we?

Dad stopped laughing and we followed suit. He handed me the broom.

"I want you to get every single piece down from that ceiling right now, Young Lady. I don't ever want to see this again."

It was a good two weeks before I pulled any other pranks on my brother. Just when he thought he was safe - the liquid soap was back.