PRACTICAL JOKE

Since I've been going through vintage photos, I decided to deviate a bit from the food subject of this blog to share a funny story from my childhood. My mom liked practical jokes and I inherited her penchant for playing them...even as a young girl!! 

I had one sister and two brothers. We all played instruments in school as well as taking piano lessons. Music was a huge part of our family life....but that's another story!

This photo was taken about the same time that this practical joke happened. My mom is allergic to pennicillin and had a very bad reaction to it which landed her in bed for an extended time.  Her aunt was an R.N. and came to live with us to care for her.  A bed was moved into our downstairs den so she didn't have to climb stairs and she needed complete bed rest.  This aunt was not a favorite of ours. She had never been married and she was quite eccentric with a strong personality! She was the typical old maid!

This aunt was a very good care taker for my mom, now that I look back, but at the time we resented her so much. She would not allow us into my mom's room to see her and demanded complete silence in the house! It drove us nuts! 

One particular day, Dan and I decided we had had enough and formed a plan to torture her as much as she had tortured us!  We lived in one of those big old two-story homes with a front and back stairway with an upstairs hallway running from one to the other.  It made for great chases through the house! 

We both got out our instruments, I with my flute, and Dan with his french horn.  We went to the front stairway, which had a landing about 6 steps up before turning and going the rest of the way upstairs.  On the count of three, we both blasted our horns as loud as we could...nothing musical...just LOUD , shrill, and L-O-N-G...until we heard her shoes clack-clack-clack as she RUSHED to the front to give us a piece of her mind.  Then, we stopped playing and ran up the stairs to the back stairway, down to the landing which was half way down, and began the whole procedure over again! L-O-U-D and L-O-N-G...until we heard, once again, her shoes clack-clack-clacking.  We stopped, and ran back up to the perch in the front of the house and repeated this again!

I'm not sure how many times we continued this, but she kept up her quest to stop us until my Dad finally hollered at us and told us to quit.  We laughed sooooo hard!

The really funny part is this.  Years later, when we talked about this event with my mom, she said she remembered it vividly, and she was laughing the whole time!!!

There's a Bible verse that says that laughter is like medicine to the soul...well...that day she got the medicine she needed. It really lifted her spirits..and ours!!