Two Can Play This Game

Although my mom is afraid of the strangers in the mirror, she gives as good as she gets and she loves to find new ways to scare the crap out of the rest of us. She shuffles away cackling at her cleverness and we are left clutching our chests.

A few nights ago the twins and Jesse were watching Halloween (the original with Jamie Lee Curtis) and my mom snuck up behind Jesse's recliner. Laurel saw her and my mom put her finger to her lips to tell her to be quiet. Then she reached down and touched Jesse's cheek. He came out of his skin and his eyes were big as saucers. He managed to avoid screaming like a little girl but turned the light on for the rest of the movie. My mother shuffled away, cackling with glee.

On almost a daily basis my mother manages to bring me to the edge of a heart attack. She makes NO SOUND as she moves around the house without her slippers. At least with her slippers on I can hear them flapping on the tile. But in socks she is like a stealth tracker. She will stand just outside of my door in the dark, with her pale white skin and her long blond hair, and wait for me to catch her in my peripheral vision. I never fail to jump out of my skin and scream at the top of my lungs. I grab my chest and tell her that I am going to die of a heart attack in the near future. She shuffles away, cackling as loud as she can.

Lest you think this is just the dementia causing her to be mischevious, this is the same woman who would take great delight in going to Spencer's Gifts and buying joke materials for my brother and I; garlic gum, cigarette explosives, fake vomit.... Her favorite was to buy a can of fart spray and wait for the hilarity to ensue.

She and my brother would roam the mall scouting for the perfect victims. The most likely victims were mothers with young children. A quick squirt would result in every child having their pants checked for an "accident." But her favorites were young couples. She would slip up behind them for a quick spray then walk away and laugh herself silly as the victims looked at each other trying to figure out if the other one just farted. I often wonder how many dating couples broke up after that, thinking that the other was a gaseous troll.

This morning I had an opportunity for pay back. I heard her moving around in her room at the front of the house. I went to the privacy curtain that Jesse hung up in the open doorway and I jerked it back and yelled "WHAT'S GOING ON IN HERE??" My mom jumped out of her skin and said "You just scared the PISS out of me!" Then her face lit up and she cackled with glee.... Some things never change. :)