Here's to you, Stephen King!

I was told that Stephen King, the author, exercises his writing skills every day. He sits down at his keyboard and just starts typing whatever comes to his mind. He writes a minimum of 1500 words. and although most of the stuff ends up in the cirucular file, Mr. King finds that eventually stuff of real worth begins to surface.

So in honor of Stephen King, my scribblings will be about scaring people. I must admit that most of Stephen King's writings are way too scary for me, which is rather odd when you consider the fact that I grew up with a dad that loved to jump out from around corners and scare the crap out of me. He and my father-in-law continued this awful legacy with my kids. And then my Stephanie loved it so much that she would regularly terrorize our family.

Stephanie was pretty fearless, too! Unlike other girls her age, she LOVED spiders, bugs, slime, the dark, and monster faces. She had the patience of Job when it came to plotting out and waiting for her next victim. One time she must have laid in wait for at least 2 hours in the bathtub, an hour + under a bed, the broom closet, in the dryer, in the hamper under dirty clothes, and the list goes on. Oh, I chuckle now, but then?! Not so much!

Eventually the rest of our family united in trying to figure out ways to get Stephanie. We failed miserably! She had this uncanny sense of awareness. Stephanie just knew when we were plotting something and inevitably our plot would backfire only to have her scare us!

But we did have a few successes. One day I decided that our game closet needed to be cleaned out and reorganized. I enlisted the help of all my kids and everyone was pretty good to help out, everyone except Steph. Now, that same year we had a mice problem, it was pretty bad. The mice would actually come out and wave to us. It took us well over a month to get rid of them, hence the cleaning of the game closet.

Anyways, the crammed game closet was about 4 feet wide, 3 feet deep and 8 ft tall. It was located at the head of the central hallway which was only about 3 wide and about 12 feet long. Once we began, the hallway quickly became littered with bags filled with broken games and missing pieces, stacks of puzzles, games and toys. After several hours, we were nearing completion of this daunting task, when one of the girls complained that Stephanie had been no help at all. The youngest sibling suggested that we should get Stephanie by scaring her. We plotted and schemed, then preying on the fact that Stephanie was fearless to most anything, we called her to the closet, We told her that we had found a nest of baby mice and that we wanted her get rid of it. Gallantly, Steph rushed to the rescue, wiggling and jamming herself in the darkest part of the closet to retrieve the 'mice.' And then, I let out my loudest, most shrillest blood curdling scream, "Aaaaahhhhhhhh, it's a RAT!!!!"

In less than a nano second, Stephanie was out of the closet and in one leap that would have set a world's long jump record, she was down the hall screaming at the top of her lungs! The girls and I were laughing so hard that our sides hurt and tears streamed down our faces! High fives were exchanged as Stephanie returned with a sheepish smile on her face.

Stephanie's love for scaring people was not limited to our family. I'm talking anyone, and I mean anyone, that set foot in our home for any length of time was fair game for Steph, including my husband's foreman.

One time Lorenzo returned from Mexico with a stuffed Iguana. I don't mean like a cute plush stuffed animal, I'm talking the real thing...a full sized Iguana that had been to a taxidermist and was about 3 1/2 feet long from head to tail. He had bought it for her as a 'gift.' Now, Stephanie had a pet iguana, named Freddie, as in Freddie Kruger from the horror fillms. It was quite the contrast to see this cute little dark haired, freckled face, 10 year old girl carrying her beloved cool, green, scaly monster, which was a long as her 4 foot height. She loved Freddie and delighted in most people's knee jerk reaction of shock and fear.

As Stephanie arrived home from school, Lorenzo was waiting for her with this gosh awful stuffed iguana and told her he was sorry but that he had it with Freddie. Stephanie's eyes became as big as saucers and she took off screaming and running for the house in tears. The reaction really did ruin the joke, but when Stephanie came out with Fred things evened up pretty quickly!

I'm sure I'm not to my 1500 words but this has been fun, scribbling memories and practicing my craft. If you have a funny story about scaring someone, tell me about it. I guess I do enjoy watching someone get scared....BOO! Especially if it's not ME!