A Ghost Appearance

It all started when I was in high school. Momma & I would put this fly in various places and try to startle each other. Once under the covers, once in the laundry basket, once in her medicine cabinet. It was a lot of healthy tom-foolery and it was kinda fun to know that she was going to come upon the plastic fly and get startled. Then the fly disappeared and we found other things

with which to annoy each other: a rubber snake (which we wisely abandoned after Daddy got bit, though a new one made an appearance when Daddy got well and we could laugh about the Snake Bite some), an eyeball (which I believe made some appearances in my lunch), a lizard and then random little things.

When Brett & I got married, he upped the ante some. Brett got into really random things to do to the mother - he'd change the sounds on her computer to make chicken noises or leave a Clinging Koala with Al Sharpton's head in her art room. There was a parrot that made a few back & forths and Brett's favorite must be the coconut husk baboon with his parachute. Momma got Brett back by almost sending me to the grave with a chicken hanging in our refrigerator by a noose. She employed one of my brothers to plant that one.

One of my favorite pranks, though, was a few years ago - 2006 - when we had Kamber come to town. Kamber, Brett & I went Pumpkin Picking in Ellijay and found some really fantastic pumpkins. We plotted. We knew what we were doing! We knew that this would be fantastic! We practiced at home, we worked tirelessly for ages to set the thing up. We knew who would have what job when we made the drop. It was going to be flawless! We created Seymour. Seymour Butts.

We created him in our driveway, practiced the set up, then took him down. Seymour Butts was going to Moon the parents' house! He was designed and we would set him up to be looking up at the mother's art room. We drove over to their house after we knew they would be in bed. Stealthy as ninjas, and swiftly as a finely tuned machine, we set up Seymour and then ran like maniacs, laughing all the time. Believe me when I tell you, it was a little startling to get home and the parents had already called to tell us they knew we'd done that! They'd been at the symphony and came home maybe 5 minutes

after we left!!! We were almost caught! But we weren't and it was perfect.

The next year, Billy helped me create Scarlett O'Furin. I lost all the pictures, for some reason, but I'll find some and put them up someday. It was a great scarecrow parody on my mom - including raised pinky finger, gloopy jewels and wine glass. It was truly remarkable.

We skipped last year. But this year, we knew they weren't suspecting anything! My "condition" doesn't allow me to do much, but this I insisted on. I'd seen the pictures on the internet somewhere (google "chicken wire ghost") in February, and I knew that that MUST happen this year. So last night, Billy & Emmalee came over and we set to creating this ghost. We shaped and molded and shaped some more. Then, under cover of darkness, we took him over there and set him up in the jungle. He appears to be pointing to something in the ground. He's truly spooky.

Here's a great picture of him set up:

Halloween Cracks me up and I can't wait to introduce Thing 1 and Thing 2 to the fun of Gentle Jokes and Pranks!