Environmental Awareness

When my husband, George, gets home from work, he usually comes in the house through the garage. When he gets to the interior garage door that leads into the laundry room, he swings the door open and takes a quick look around before he actually steps foot inside. You see, I have made my husband paranoid, or at least paranoid about coming into our home. I like to say that I am teaching him to be aware of his surroundings. It may seem odd that George should be so cautious about walking into his own home on any given day, but the truth of the matter is George married a prankster and my all time favorite go-to prank is hiding from him, then jumping out and scaring the poo out of him. It's his own fault really. If he didn't scream like a little girl or yell absurdities all the while dancing in place and doing his best bobble head impression, I wouldn't waste my time. Frankly, it's the best laugh of my day.

The game of hiding from loved ones only to jump out and scare them within in an inch of their lives is a game that my mom taught my brother and me when we were kids. Imagine that. One minute Mom would be busy in the kitchen or putting laundry in the dryer and the next minute, she was nowhere to be found. In those moments, I knew Mom was hiding from me, and that at any second, she would pop up from behind my bed or burst out of a closet, scare the daylights out of me, and then we would both crumple over with laughter. It was always fun and unnerving at the same time. I remember one such instance when she went into hiding and I searched the whole house in an effort to beat her at her own game only to come up empty handed. Needing to relieve myself, and feeling confident that she was probably in the garage, I headed to the bathroom, which I had already searched. I went into the bathroom, started to close the door, and as I turned, I found Mom perched on the toilet seat hidden from view by the opened bathroom door. I think she quietly said, "Boo." I know I screamed and it's possible, just possible, in light of where I was, that I may have peed my pants a little. We still laugh about that one.

Mom taught me the fine art of choosing our victims. The bigger the screamer, the better the target. Enter my Uncle Robert. Now Uncle Robert was actually my great uncle so he was an older gentleman and quite easy to catch off guard. He always put on quite the show of hollering and jumping out of his skin any time that we scared him, so of course, he was the obvious target. What I have failed to mention is that in earlier years when Uncle Robert was still a smoker, he suffered not one, not two, but three heart attacks. Yeah, I know we probably shouldn't have been hiding from him but I like to think that it brought him almost as much joy as it brought us. I should also mention that we stopped hiding from him after he had the quadruple bypass and you'll be relieved to know that he lived to be 91 years old and his passing was not the direct result of any of his heart issues.

So now, the not so coveted title of Most Demonstrative Victim falls to my dear sweet George. Oh, I'd love to scare the kids, and I have on occasion, but it's hard to savor the scare high when Nathan is crying or Liam is telling me how angry that makes him. Jacob puts on a good show, and he usually falls to the floor with laughter but I don't like to target him too much because it just doesn't seem sporting. I get Vivie every now and then so she doesn't feel left out, and she thinks it's the funniest thing ever, but George is by far my favorite target. Before you start thinking I'm twisted and mean, let me just say that George has gotten me a time or two (he actually brought me to tears once) but I'm not as jumpy as he is thanks to Mom's Environmental Awareness Program for the Up and Coming Paranoid.

All this to say that for several consecutive months on an almost daily basis, I would hide from George in the laundry room upon his arrival home from a long day at the office. It's reasonable to assume that I would be able to scare him once. It's even probable to think that I would scare him twice, but let me tell you, I scared that man nearly every single time I hid in that same spot for months on end. One day, George decided to push the door open and take a look around the laundry room before he actually entered the house. That decision was life changing for him. This is now his habit and it makes my job a little more challenging, and to be honest, a little more rewarding when I actually score the scare. I keep at it because I would hate for an intruder to scare George and George's initial reaction be his usual jumping in place, arms flailing in all directions, topped off with a shrill scream; however, this might just cause the intruder to fall to the ground with uncontrollable laughter buying George the small amount of time he would need for his fight reflex to kick into gear. Nonetheless, I have been laying low for a while. It might just be time to crank it up a notch.