I, ROBOT

In response to a writing prompt at Mama’s Losin’ It:

Write about something mean you did to a sibling growing up.

        My sister Linda was a practical jokester. Being three years older than I was, she thought of clever things to do to make my life miserable. When I was very small, she pretended to eat sand from our sandbox, telling me how good it tasted. Of course, I believed her and went crying to my mother with a mouth full of the horrible grit. Once when Linda was supposed to pack my lunch for Brownie day camp, I found two pieces of paper with the words “SWISS CHEESE” and “HAM” written on them between two slices of bread in my lunch bag. She even cut round holes of varying sizes in the paper labeled “SWISS CHEESE.”
        Every day for about a week, I found my wet toothbrush lying on the sink instead of in the holder above the sink. I ignored it for a few days. But Linda was patient. She was waiting for me to say something, then told me my toothbrush had fallen into the toilet so she didn’t want to put it in the rack with the other brushes. Of course, it hadn’t fallen in the toilet. She just said that to annoy me.

        It took me a while, but I soon realized Linda was terrified of many things. All I had to do was scare her with them. She was afraid of bugs and worms--- I loved chasing her around the yard with a juicy worm dangling from my fingers. She would scream and cry if she had to get a shot or have antiseptic applied to a cut or scrape. When she was 12, an episode of “Captain Video” scared her so much that we were never allowed to watch it again.
        Click HERE to see how totally inane it would be to be afraid of this old TV show. Besides a low budget and terrible acting, to save money this futuristic outer space show was interspersed with clips of old cowboy movies which were supposed to depict Captain Video’s undercover agents on Earth.
        One week, my sister had been particularly mean to me. She claimed I was responsible for something she had done ---and of course, I was punished for it. She had also punched my arm resulting in a painful 4-inch bruise, but when I blamed her, she told my mother I had fallen and was lying to get her into trouble. I was racking my brain for a clever way to pay her back, when an idea fell right into my lap.

        We were watching an episode of “The Thin Man” with Peter Lawford and Phyllis Kirk. On the internet, I discovered that the episode “Robot Client” aired on Friday 2/28/58. I was 12 and my sister was 15. (Click on the name of the episode to watch the video of it ---about 25 minutes.)
        The plot revolved around a scientist who had invented Robby the Robot to handle radioactive materials. When military officials showed up for a demonstration, Robby entered the room carrying a dead body.
        At that point, my sister screamed and cried and wouldn’t watch the rest of the show. I was 12 and it didn’t scare me at all. “The Thin Man” was a mystery/drama, but it was also a comedy.

        But then, I knew how I was going to get back at my sister and luckily I had two things I needed to do it.
        My parents bedroom was on the first floor of our house. My sister and I had separate rooms upstairs. My bedroom had two walk-in closets. One held my clothes, but the other was used for storage ---and that is where my two props had been packed away. I found what I needed and hid them under the bed so I wouldn’t have to be digging through the closet when everyone else was sleeping.
        I waited and waited until I was sure my sister was asleep. Over my PJs, I pulled on a Halloween costume from 1956. In 1958 it didn’t fit so well, but it would do. It consisted of pants and a pullover shirt that were made from a metallic gray fabric with black outlines that were supposed to look like dials and knobs. There was also a gray hood to hide my hair. The shirt may have looked somewhat like the illustration to the left.

        It was a rather poor excuse for a robot costume, but the best part was the mask.
        The red and blue mask had a piece of plastic, like a one-way mirror, so I could see out but no one could see in. Above that were two red eyes with flashlight bulbs in them. A wire ran from the mask down my arm. In my hand I held a cardboard cylinder made of two sections, one inside of the other with a spring inside. By squeezing it, contact was made with a D battery which made the eyes light up. Releasing it turned the eyes off.
        From a box in the closet I had retrieved an old rag doll. It was huge --probably four feet long, as you can see from the photo of it on my typically unmade bed ---from when I was about 8. I laid the doll across my arms to look like the robot on TV carrying a dead body.
        I crept down the hall to Linda’s room. At her open door, I started flashing the eyes off and on and walked stiff-legged like a robot. I grunted a little and bumped against the bed to wake her. Finally, she sensed my presence. In the light from my robot eyes, I saw her eyelids flutter open, then her startled face ----and then all hell broke loose.
        Her scream could have lifted the roof from the house. She sounded like Fay Wray when she spotted King Kong through her window. And my sister wouldn’t stop screaming. I ran to my room, tore off the mask, hood and costume shirt, and threw them under the bed along with the doll. I jumped into bed and pulled the covers to my neck. By that time, my mother had flown up the stairs. My father slept like the dead, so knew nothing had happened until the next day.
        I wiggled out of the costume bottoms, leaving them under the covers and stumbled down the hall rubbing my eyes, asking what was going on. I didn’t want to miss seeing my sister turning into a blob of quivering Jello. When she calmed down enough to speak, Linda kept saying the robot from “The Thin Man” had been in her room. My mother, at first, thought she had been having a nightmare. I tried to act totally innocent, but I couldn’t keep a straight face. My mother finally figured out what I had done.
        I hadn’t thought ahead enough to realize my sister’s sonic screams in the middle of the night could have given my mother a heart attack. However, my mother had a sense of humor and laughed about it the next day. Linda, however, never found any humor in the experience.
        I don’t remember my punishment so it probably wasn’t too terrible. But, no matter. It was worth it. Besides setting my sister’s knees knocking for a few days, the incident put an end to her pathetically amateur practical jokes. Ultimately, she realized she was in the presence of a master.

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)

To read about my all-time best practical joke, click here: "CARD TRICK"

CARD TRICK

In response to a writing prompt on Mama’s Losin’ It: 

Tell about a time you stole something.

        I taught art in public schools for more than thirty years. The classrooms were arranged on two long, narrow floors of the junior high building. The women’s faculty room was on the first floor at one end of the building while my classroom was on the second floor at the opposite end. I rarely visited the women’s faculty room.
        However, the men’s faculty room was a short distance from my classroom on the second floor. If I wanted a soft drink, I went there rather than hike to the women’s lounge. I always knocked first. I didn’t want to walk in on someone changing into coaching sweats.
        One Friday in September (sometime in the 70's) my first husband needed my car, so I rode to work with another teacher and David was supposed to pick me up at 5:30. On Fridays, the place cleared out right after the students left at 3:15. However, I always had things I could do, so I stayed in my room preparing lessons and mixing paints for the next week. I wore a lab coat with huge pockets over my dress.
        It was a hot day. Before my husband arrived, I sauntered to the men’s faculty room to use the soda machine. Even though I was sure everyone was gone, I knocked. There was no answer so I entered. I noticed that there were about five decks of cards scattered on the work table. For about two years, the guys had been playing a continuous game of Hearts. They played before school, at lunch time, and after school. They talked about it constantly and there were ongoing rivalries among the card players.

        On a whim, I slipped all of the cards into my large pockets and moseyed nonchalantly back to my classroom sipping my can of soda. I saw no one, not even the evening cleaning crew. In my room, I quickly placed the cards in a box on the bottom shelf at the far corner of my supply closet. There were storage closets in each art room, so there was no reason for the other two art teachers to be in mine.
        On Monday morning before students arrived, there was quite a bit of excitement over coffee in the cafeteria. Everyone was asking, “Who took the cards?” The men were beside themselves, as if they had withdrawal symptoms because they couldn’t play Hearts that day. They were accusing each other and speculating on the culprit. The guys played lots of practical jokes on each other, so there were many possibilities.

        No one even looked my way. I was laughing inside, but I could keep a straight face when I needed to. 

        Finally, the men decided that someone I shall call Dick had taken the cards. Dick was an ornery English teacher who said whatever came to his mind without thinking, insulting one and all. He complained constantly about the card games. He picked arguments over everything. 

        Dick was married, but flirted inappropriately with female faculty and students. Today he would be slapped with a sexual harassment suit, but no one thought of doing that back then. He also thought he was the world’s gift to women, always wearing several buttons of his shirt open to display his manly chest hair. He actually made most of the female staff want to barf. I expect most of his students felt the same.
        Dick’s being accused was an unexpected, yet welcome consequence, because Dick was probably the only faculty member I disliked, as did nearly everyone else.
        
        The next day, of course, there were more cards in the faculty room, but the guys either took them with them or locked them up each day. But after a few weeks, they got careless, and on one of my late afternoon stays, a few more decks of cards mysteriously disappeared again.
        This went on for an entire school year. Every few weeks, I would steal more cards and store them in my hiding place. Dick was blamed every time and every time he proclaimed his innocence to deaf ears. I knew Dick was being unfairly blamed, but he deserved everyone's wrath for all of the insensitive things he did do but had never been called on. I didn't feel even one iota of guilt over the false accusations.

        The night before the last day of school in June, I knew I would be staying late at work because grades were due the next day. After I completed my grades, I stayed to store supplies for the summer and file papers for the next school year. When I was sure everyone else had left, I carried my heavy box to the faculty room. I dumped at least fifty decks of cards onto the work table, and mixed them up so that it would take some effort to get them back into individual decks.
        The next day, Dick was blamed again.

        Although it was the best practical joke I ever pulled, for over 25 years I told no one what I had done.
        At my retirement luncheon, I finally confessed all. It was difficult to convince several of the men that Dick (who had moved to a different job years before) hadn’t been the real culprit after all.
        One guy came up to me, gave me a huge good-bye hug, and said, “Damn, woman. You really know how to keep a secret.” I took that as a compliment.

(©2009, C.J. Peiffer)