Double Mint Glum

Lots of us grew up with a brother or sister that we would play with, fight with, and pull practical jokes on and I'm among that group.  But, my sibling happens to be my twin ...and identical to me.  We still look alike but not nearly as much as we did growing up and that, my friends, opens the door to a level of pranking that you non-identical twins and singlets will never understand.  I wasn't as imaginative or brave as my sister was so she was usually the one pulling the prank on me or creating the one we'd pull on some unsuspecting individual.  


When we were in our teens, the most frequented prank by my twin was accepting icky dates on my behalf no matter who it was.  In fact, if the dude picked his nose and had ear wax hanging out of his ears that just made it all the better for her!  I can still envision her to this day waiting eagerly for me to find out when the guy would eventually say "I'm looking forward to our date tonight Barbara!".  I'd stammer with some words while staring at the food in his teeth (is that an old green bean or peas) and it came out like "Um, yeah...er...well you see...ummmm...I'm not feeling very well, soooo...yeah...I'll call you to reschedule."  I'm pretty sure I walked away fast enough that they couldn't prove that I heard "but, but you don't have my number!"  I know my sister would watch for me when she knew I was going to be home soon to scream at her and I also know that she was probably pacing back and forth until I burst through the door and then she'd just slap her knee and say "ohhhh, man that NEVER gets old!".  She was really good at getting me with that one.


Another one of my loving twin's favorite pranks over the years was to patiently wait for me to go to sleep and then sneak into my room and stand over my bed and just stare at me. There were no words, no quick throat clearing; she'd just stand there and lean over my angelic face (what? I'm very angelic looking when I'm asleep). I am still not sure as to how much time she would invest in this prank each time she did it but clearly she found it worth the price for getting less sleep than me.  At some point my subconscious would start poking me on the shoulder and whisper to me that I was being watched.  No matter how many dang times she'd do that stunt it would scare the hell out of me!  There's that moment when you crack your eyes open ever so slightly and since your rational self is probably still in la-la land you think "HOLY CRAP I'M GONNA GET DEAD!!"  Also, I'd like to say that my scream-box was apparently on mute and the only thing that would come out was a hiss of air and a tiny squeak.  I'm pretty sure that a mouse could make more of a scream than I did (but now I'm getting a really funny visual of a tiny white mouse screaming its fool head off).  Anyway, my sister would top off her prank with just a big toothy-white grin in the dark and now I was just scared of her!  See, she's good at this stuff.  She could also blank out with her eyes open so when I'd get bored and go to wake her up she looked dead and that was more freaky than I can even describe.  Makes my eyes dry just thinking about it too.


We did pull pranks on our teachers but sometimes karma would step in and give "me" a pop-quiz when we did this...I didn't like that prank much.  One of our teachers actually helped us with that one once; I'll never forget Mrs. Evans - she was awesome!  She said "I'll help, but if you ever pull that on me I'll give you so much homework you two girls won't know who's who either!"  God love that woman...we pulled that prank on her the very next week.


I know I went over the bed-moving prank my sister loved to pull on me in an earlier post but for those of you who didn't see that one, here's a recap:  I am and have always been scared of the dark.  Due to this issue I am also afraid of what could be lurking under my bed at night.  Now, a good prank would have been for my sister to hide under my yellow-checkered twin bed...but that wasn't nearly good enough for her! Nuh-uh, no way - she was better than that. She knew that I took five steps from my door into my room and took a flying leap into the safety of my canopied bed.  She also knew that I wouldn't eye-ball the distance every night either (plus, who the heck would?!  One trusts that ones bed won't arbitrarily move at any given moment).  So on this fateful night I ended up with my knees lodged into my throat.  Yay.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to scramble onto your bed when you feel like you've been smashed by a trash compacter?  Trust me, it's hard...but fear of being touched by cold dead-like fingers will motivate anyone!  Good one Sister...good one.


I have more but I have to leave one story out.  I can, however, tell you the outcome... cryptically.  Sad to say, but my parents couldn't let me keep my plastic yellow trashcan.  And that's tragic because it was in the shape of a beautiful tulip!  I was only allowed a wicker trash can after this...um... incident (maybe "accident" is a better word).  No one likes to have to walk down the hall in the middle of the night by themselves after their beloved twin scares the...well it's not my fault my sister decided that night she wanted all of her beauty sleep after a hard day of playing "Gotcha Again"!  Anyhow...moving on.


One thing that we'd do to each other that doesn't really belong in the prank category, just the "ha ha, messed with your head" category is something quite odd.  We were very good at easily getting attached to any stuffed animal or live animal for that matter.  We would anthropomorphize anything that had a face...and sometimes it didn't even have to have one.  The definition of that huge word is "to ascribe human form or attributes to (an animal, plant, material object, etc.)." I learned that reading a book...awesome! My dad was actually really good at getting any sock and bringing it to life (the best was when the sock got angry). We could go to any store and find anything from a cute stuffed animal to a t-shirt and start saying things like "pweeeease don't leave me here at the store, I would die of the lonely" or "all of my other t-shirt friends have gone to a good home, please don't leave me behind". We were so good that we could even make ourselves tear up! Then when it was time to go we would have to tear ourselves away from the chosen toy or object thus leaving a piece of our heart behind at Belks. Weird. My sister was really good at that and it probably drove our parents batty since we, more times than not, would beg to take said toy home with us. Lord I feel sorry for our parents. I think most everyone anthropomorphizes their pets and I find that completely...no, mostly normal - it's when the item doesn't have a heartbeat that it becomes strange.

Soooo, my sister just proof read my blog and decided to remind me of all the heat she took for me too. BUT, this is my blog and I remain the victim.  Awesome.