My Three Year Old Self
by Jesse Boz
The Birthday and the Balloons
When I was turning three years old, I fractured my foot. My parents were throwing me a birthday party and it was only twenty minutes until the kids were suppose to show up, I went to kick a balloon. I started to run towards the carpet from the kitchen to the living room. I kicked too early and I rammed my foot into the carpet, fracturing my foot. The next day, my family noticed that my foot still hurt and got it ex-rayed. I was then carried around by my dad until the foot had healed. Who would have thought that a birthday balloon could be so dangerous?
The Sledding Accidental Flip
I was only three when I had gone sledding. My mom and brother were there with me to go sledding on the hill. We had gone down and stopped. My brother had the sled. They walked to the edge of the hill and started to go up to sled again. In my mind, I would cross the bottom and up the hill and somehow be faster than them. When I started over the bottom of the hill, I was hit by someone who was sledding to the bottom. My mom told me later that I twirled up in the air and spun three times. Then, I remember landing back towards the ground and landing in the arms of the woman that hit me in the first place. I sled down the rest of the hill and I got off, and later, my mom said that my eyes were huge when getting off the sled and I was breathing very heavy. I didn’t expect to be a projectile and land in a stranger’s arms!
HALLOWEEN SCARY AND REAL SCAREY THINGS
by Jade Boz
When I was young, no one went trick-or-treating after the age of 12. A teenager who still went out on Halloween night was made fun of by the other kids. So, as a teen, it was up to us to figure out how to spend our Halloween nights. Halloween was simply too great an opportunity to pass up, and I definitely had role models in my big sister and big brother (and the rest of my family) to help me decide what was possible to be done with that night. They say “a mind is a terrible thing to waste”, and I’d amend that to “and a very fun thing to play with”. And, what better time to play with one than on Halloween night? I taught this theory to my kids as they grew, but to understand why my son and I thought that acting out a Grim Reaper scene (with him pretend-stabbing me) at the end of our street under the street lamp would be so much fun, I have to give you a bit of background from my childhood.
My Sister’s Dismembered Doll Head Rolling Down the Stairs
When I was young, we lived on a dead end, which was skipped by some trick-or-treaters who only visited the longer roads that had more houses right in a row. So, one year, my sister teamed up with a friend who lived on one of the longer roads, whose house was two-story and had a staircase from the second story that ended right across from the front door. They opened the main door so that anyone could see the stairs, took a doll head off a rather scraggly-haired doll, and sat at the top of the stairs, awaiting the door bell. They were ready. When kids came and rang the door bell, my sister or her friend would let out a blood-curdling scream and let the doll’s head bounce down the staircase. Most of the kids didn’t stay around for their treats!
The Vampire House
I knew how that felt since we didn’t stay around for treats from the Vampire house. One house, (just down the street from the house my sister had been at) put a full casket in the front window. A figure was dressed up as Dracula, the red vest, black suit with overcoat and cape, and was ghost white, lying inside the red-velvet-lined casket. They were ready. My friends and I stood there, taking a break from trick-or-treating, and studied the cool figure, talking about how they got him to look so real. Then, HE SAT UP IN THE CASKET!! As we tried not to kill each other, tripping over each other in the effort to GET OFF THAT PORCH QUICK, he stood up and acted like he was coming though that window. I don’t think they gave out any treats that year. We were two houses away in an instant, so I’d bet their neighbors didn’t give out much either.
My Brother’s Solution to “Being Too Old to Trick-or-Treat”
One year, when my brother was in that “teens can’t dress up and get candy” timeframe, he still wanted candy, but I worked too hard for mine and wouldn’t share. I was also a little aggravated at what I wore as a costume. Since my brother was a football player, my mom thought an easy costume would be for me to be a football player. As a girl of about 7 or 8 years old, this sounded cool in theory, to wear your big brother’s football outfit, but was a disaster in reality. First off, the helmet bounced around on my head since my head was too small for it, giving me a headache. I wore shoulder pads on TOP of the shirt (but they still rubbed underneath), and my brother put black smudges under my eyes, “like real football players wear”, I was told (and it took scrubbing off most of my skin to get it off later). I went around with about 4 other kids in my neighborhood, ALL BOYS. They snickered and looked at me out of the corner of their eyes when just about every person who came to the door said something like, “my, don’t you boys look awesome tonight”, while I ground my teeth. At first, I corrected them and said, “I’M A GIRL!” But, after a couple of these, I just gave up and let them think I was just “one of the boys”. GRRRRRRR. Anyway, back to my brother. I came home and, like I said, had worked too hard to get that candy and was not about to share it. So, my brother made a deal with me. He said he’d dress me up as something else and take me around again if I’d share half of the candy I collected with him. I figured this would mean he wouldn’t try to steal my candy later, plus I’d get some more, so win-win. So, he put lipstick stripes on my face and an orange t-shirt on me and declared, “You’re a tiger”, and we were ready. We went to the same houses that I’d just come from. What was most distressing was that NONE OF THE PEOPLE KNEW I DOUBLE-DIPPED! Even our direct neighbors who knew me had not known that the football player was me (I found out later)!
My “It’s Fun to Scare Little Kids Who Trick-or-Treat”
When I got to the teen stage, I decided to do something to scare the little kids who still could trick-or-treat. By this time, I’d moved to another house in another city, but no one came to our house because it was a farm that sat too far back off the road. However, a full subdivision was right across the street. So, I teamed up with two of my friends at one of their houses for this. We put two kitchen chairs together on their front sidewalk (so no one could kill themselves tripping off the front porch like I had at that vampire house), threw a sheet over them, and we had our set up complete. One friend dressed up as a nice normal clown (a funny, cute one, not a scary one) to get their attention and sat with the big bowl of candy on the front of the chairs. My other friend, Tim, and I dressed up as spooky vampires in black outfits, with fake blood dripping down from our fangs. We hid behind the chairs, crouched down, and waited. We were ready. When a trick-or-treater came toward the clown to get candy, we’d jump out toward them, lifting our arms in the classic vampire style of the arm in front of the face. When the screams died down, we’d call them back to come get their candy. Most of the kids came back, eyeing us with suspicion like we were going to really try to come suck their blood! These were the same kids we got on the school bus with every school day!
My Son, the Grim Reaper
Now, let’s fast forward to my family now. My son had heard all these stories as he grew. So, when he was a teen, we came up with a great plan. Once again, I lived on a dead-end street where half the houses don’t give out candy and stay dark, so we sometimes didn’t get a lot of trick-or-treaters. My son, Sean, dressed as the Grim Reaper, fully covered with a totally black outfit with white, scare-type face. I dressed in an awesome cape, black on the outside, red on the inside, with a hood that fully covered my face if I pulled it forward enough. We were ready. We went to the end of our street where it intersected with the rest of the neighborhood. The street lamp was on, and the main subdivision street as well as our street that continued on the other side across from our dead-end got a great (to us, anyway) theatrical show. We would wait for a car to come from any direction, then I’d “run down the street in distress”, being chased by my son, the Grim Reaper, who was “brandishing a (fake) scythe (Grim Reaper type knife) at me”. Right as the car got there, I’d turn and throw my hands up in surrender, as he “knifed” me, and I fell backward onto the road (note: my son had had to teach me how to “fall correctly” so as to tuck-and-roll and not get hurt that night). We had a lot of great results. One car with a lady in it came by four times to see our act. She must have circled the block and came from different directions. Once, a full fire truck went by, and, as I fell, I saw the fireman throw his head back, laughing, as he saw our act. Another time, a big macho truck sat across from us as we began our drama. We could only see headlights from our vantage point, but he stayed “too long”. As my son was pretending to stab me, the dude didn’t pull away, and my son whispered, “Why isn’t he going? What should we do?” and I answered, “I don’t know” (to both). So, my son, in a flash of brilliance and possibly a bit of panic, stopped stabbing at me, stood up, and pointed at him in Grim Reaper stance. After this ad-lib, the dude peeled out and FLEW down the street! I’ve always wondered if this guy was worried about this production being a warning or something just for him! Whatever, he didn’t come back.
The Farm
Scaring people can be SO much fun. I’d advise to “scare them safely”, if possible, because they just might laugh afterwards too, if they’re not like in a hospital with a broken arm or twisted ankle. The best family stories I told my kids were from my Grandparents farm. The farm house was built in the 1800’s, so it didn’t have running water (it had a water well outside), and it didn’t have an indoor bathroom. My Grandparents didn’t live there, but we’d all leave the suburbs life many weekends to go to The Farm. If you’re wondering how we used the bathroom, well, there were three ways. At night, anyone could go to the cubby hole, pull the curtain, hope no one else woke up and decided to go while you were going (though the floor squeaking was a tell-tale sign that you needed to make yourself known), and pee or poop on the pot. My poor Grandmother and Mother had the unfortunate duty to empty this in the morning. During the day, we went to the outhouse and dodged the bees that always made their nests in or around it. I always worried about falling in since you could see what was down there. Gross and stinky. And the third way was, when we walked up to the lake to swim or fish (quite a walk away from the outhouse), you went up into the woods, found a “private log”, and peed. No one wanted to have to poop in the woods, so you’d hold that for the outhouse when you got back if at all possible. The best woods pee trips happened when someone thought to bring toilet paper. The worst ones were when you had to look for some large leaves before you peed so that you have natural toilet paper (or should I call that “log paper”?). You definitely pulled the leaves off the tree, because ground leaves could cause a bad rash if it turned out to be poison ivy or oak. Since I was never good at identifying those, I’d use tree leaves. Anyway, I digress.
My Father’s Wolf Howl
The Farm is infamous for its scary stories from my childhood. Some were “man-made” scares or natural ones, but some we still can’t explain today. One day, when my brother, Brad, was around 12 years old, he asked to go to the lake to go fishing by himself. My Dad said he could go fishing as long as he returned before dark. As usual, Brad’s love of fishing made him lose track of time and he came back in the dark. My father decided to teach him a lesson. My father went out behind the outhouse, which Brad would have to walk fairly close to as he came towards the house, and he was ready. Brad, who came by a bit later, whistling (since everyone knows that only whistling keeps the monsters away), walked by the outhouse. Right then, my father let loose his best wolf howl! Brad FLED TO THE HOUSE, coming inside and telling everyone that he just heard a werewolf howl. My father walked in a minute later, asking what all the commotion was about, swearing that he had just had to use the outhouse. My brother did catch on, though, but didn’t come back from the lake after dark much for quite a few years.
My Brother and Grandfather’s REAL Scare
Fast forward a few years later, when Brad was old enough to drive (late teens?), and the scariest story happened. My Grandfather, Pawpaw, and Brad would go out to the farm late at night, sleep in the truck (so as not to have to fiddle with sheets, blankets, and such that were brought out to The Farm on an “as needed” basis), and get up extra early to go hunting. One night, as they were sleeping in the truck (emergency brake on), it began to rock back and forth. Suspecting a prank, they jumped out to figure out who would come all the way out to The Farm to pull such a joke on them. After a lot of searching, they realized that no one was around. They scratched their heads, shrugged, and climbed back in the truck to get some more sleep before their morning hunting would begin. A bit later, the truck began rolling forward slowly, and it was pointed towards the creek bed not far away. Pawpaw pushed on the brake, reapplied the parking brake, but it wasn’t stopping. Right before the truck got to the creek bed and would have gone off the edge of a small hill/cliff area into the creek, Pawpaw started the truck up and the brake stopped it. Again, no one was around. They abandoned their hunting trip that morning and got the hell out of dodge! No one could ever explain how this happened, but with two witnesses, we knew it was weird but true.
My and My Cousin’s REAL Scare
Another weird occurrence happened to me personally, with my cousin. Brett, two years younger than me, was my playmate on those trips to The Farm. When we were young, one of our favorite things to get away with was jumping on The Gold Bed. Upstairs, one oversized bed was made of HUGE springs and a mattress, and it had gold brass bars and big globes on it. Whenever we’d sneak upstairs to jump on The Gold Bed, we knew it wouldn’t last long because those springs, though they SAILED you into the air, were rather noisy and squeaky, and an adult would eventually come up stairs to make us stop jumping on it. One day, when we snuck upstairs and were jumping on it, a voice that sounded like my Grandfather’s, said, from the bottom of the stairs, “Who’s that jumping on my Gold Bed?” We stopped jumping momentarily, giggling, and then climbed off the bed and ran downstairs since we’d been “caught”. The only problem was that Pawpaw was not there. We went in the kitchen and asked my Mom and Grandmother, Mawmaw, where PawPaw was. They pointed out the window and said that he was working two fields away in the garden and had been for quite a while. Once again, two witnesses (one of them ME) and we had no idea who had said it.
Those last two stories were “REAL” because they did not readily have an explanation. Other stories began scary but DID have normal explanations and just ended up funny.
My Brother’s UFO at the Lake Story
One year, when my brother decided to go up to the lake extra early to do some fishing (he was in his late teens or early twenties), he heard a loud, splashing noise coming from the lake. He went over the big hill right before the lake but couldn’t see what was making that sound in the dark. He ran back to his truck, shakily drove the 45 minute drive to tell my father and get him to come see what it was. My father wasn’t very enthusiastic about the trip (VERY early, remember) and tried to convince Brad that it was just something natural. Brad was convinced it was a UFO landing in the lake, or a huge animal that was in the lake, SOMETHING. He managed to get my father to drive with him all the way back to the lake. By this time, the sun was just rising, so better light showed them that fish were hitting the bugs on the top of the water. My father did admit that it was VERY loud and that ALL the fish in that lake must have been hitting the top. He didn’t, however, let my brother forget about that trip for a long time.
People in Flight
Two times in my life, I have seen people fly. Yes, FLY. Unfortunately and somewhat regrettably, both times were caused by me trying to scare someone. This fun pastime falls under the mind is a “very fun thing to play with” clause I’ve described, as now I can say that I’ve made two people fly.
My Sister’s Flight Up the Stairs
My sister had to go downstairs one time to switch out the laundry from the washer to the dryer. I grinned, snuck downstairs quietly, and creeped behind the stairs, planning on jumping out to scare her. I peeked around the corner. I was ready. However, by the time I made it to the washer/dryer area, she’d finished and was about to go around the corner towards the stairs. I was wearing flip flops, but I ran through the garage, still going to give her an unlikely scare. I figured she’d most likely seen me right before she went around the corner to the stairs or must have definitely heard my flip flops clopping loudly across the garage floor. I ran around the corner and, in a half hearted attempt to scare her, said “Rah!” She literally FLEW up the stairs from about mid point and hit her head on the doorknob that was on the closet across the hall from the top of the stairs! At this point, I figured, “Oh, man, I’m in trouble. She’s gonna be so mad!” and I ran up the stairs to see if she was alright. She was facing away from me, with her head ducked and her shoulders shaking. Then, I felt so guilty, thinking that she’d gotten hurt and was crying (yet still somewhat in amazement that she’d flown so well!). When she lifted her head, I realized she wasn’t crying; she was laughing! After I got over the wave of relief, we both laughed at her “flight” up the stairs. She’d been thinking about a scary boogeyman coming up the stairs behind her right as I (who she had NOT heard at all) said “Rah!” Thus, she FLEW. A good scare at the right moment is an amazing thing!
The Flight of the Silhouette
Skip ahead to when I was recently married (but no kids yet). One night, when I was working first shift and my husband, Greg, was working a late second, I had gone to bed early. Our bed had a light on the headboard, but I’d turned it out before I went to sleep. Later, I woke up to the silhouette of a man leaning over me since the hallway light was on but the bedroom was still dark, and I let out a blood curdling scream! The silhouette FLEW backwards a few feet away into the hallway, away from this scream, and as the light hit his face, I began to laugh as my husband, confused and a bit angry, yelled, “Why did you do that?!” I mentally noted that he flew almost as well as my sister had, all those years ago. I hadn’t TRIED to scare him, though, and I’d been very freaked out that someone had been leaning over me in the dark (He said later that he was trying to turn on the light on that headboard. I still contended that he caused my scream and that his flight WAS kind of cool to see.)
My Failed Scare Attempt
Feeling bad for my poor husband at this point? Don’t. He got me back a while later, during another of my scare attempts of “playing with his mind.” We lived in a bi-level home, with a short set of stairs that come up from downstairs to the small foyer level at the front door and continued on to the upstairs part of the house. I decided to scare him, like I had my sister, by hiding downstairs and coming up from behind him with a “Rah”. Sound familiar? Yea, I like to stick with the classics. Upon hindsight, since it was lucky that my sister didn’t get hurt, this probably wasn’t the best idea, but hey, it would still be fun, right? So, when he went downstairs to put in a load of laundry, I snuck downstairs and hid behind the laundry room door at the foot of the stairs. I was ready. He came out, but I didn’t expect him to come out in a run, taking the stairs by two. I bounded up two stairs behind him and yelled, “Rah!” He let out a scream that would do someone-being-attacked-by-a-Grim-Reaper proud, which scared ME! I fell backwards down the stairs, barely regaining my footing as I hit the wall across from the bottom stair. He screamed the ENTIRE way up the stairs, realized it was me fooling with him, and came back downstairs to me standing there, stunned yet also somewhat giggly (me, not him). Yea, he was rather proud that my attempt at scaring him had backfired and I’d gotten my just rewards. I came away in awe that he could scream that high-pitched and blood-curdlingly and briefly thought that we should have recorded it and sent it to Hollywood. I guarantee it would have ended up in a teen horror flick for sure!