.jpg)
My brother William is just like Daddy: as sweet and kind and good a person as you will ever meet. He has always been that way, although when he was younger, he would play a prank or two, one of which was downright diabolical.
When he was about eleven or twelve years old, and I was fourteen or fifteen, I did something to really make him mad; I don't remember what, and neither does he, but it was probably something fairly innocuous, like tattling. Most little brothers would exact their revenge by socking you on the arm, or pushing you down, but not William. He had a far more sinister plot in mind.
William's closet and my closet backed up to each other, and each one had a couple of shelves over the clothes bar, stacked high with the usual clutter. Over the top shelf, positioned where it couldn't be seen, William somehow managed to bore a hole, from his closet to mine. Through this he threaded a long piece of string, which went into an opening in the top of a small cookie tin that he hid on the top shelf in my closet. He attached the line to several nails, so that when you pulled on the string, it sounded like chains rattling.
The stage was set. William waited until everyone had gone to bed, then yanked on the string: clank, clank. Clank, clank. "MAMA DADDY MAMA DADDY THERE'S SOMETHING IN MY CLOSET!!!" They rushed in, and looked in the closet, then waited to see if it would happen again, but all was quiet, and they went back to their room. Just when everybody was almost asleep: clank, clank. Clank, clank. Having already been traumatized by seeing the movie Thirteen Ghosts too many times at the Ritz Theater, I became hysterical: there was a ghost in my closet. Mama ended up sleeping in my room, and of course, with her there, the ghost was silent.
"On Saturday," Mama said, "we're going to clean out your closet, and get to the bottom of this." This gave William time to remove the contraption, and put a small piece of tape over the hole, so when the closet-cleaning took place, nothing was found.
The cookie tin was reinstalled, and the little "hauntings," heard only by me, became regular occurrences. "Want to hear something funny?" William would ask his buddies Bruce Pearlman and Ronnie Blanton, inviting them to spend the night on the weekends, and letting them participate in the joke. I don't think Mac was a party to William's little mischief.
This went on for years, at irregular intervals. The ghost would go silent for long periods, only to resurface from time to time, usually after I had incurred William's wrath over something or other, but I never made the connection. Having concluded that the ghost was a benign force, the earlier hysterics subsided, and when the clanking started, I'd call out a sleepy, "It's at it again!"and go back to sleep. Eventually, my only response would be, "G'night."
Quite a few years later, after I had graduated from college, I was standing on a chair, looking for something on the top shelf of my closet, when I saw a string coming through a hole in the wall. The string was still tied to a handful of nails inside a cookie tin, and I realized with a sense of loss, that what I had come to affectionately call "my ghost," had only been my bratty little brother.
When he was about eleven or twelve years old, and I was fourteen or fifteen, I did something to really make him mad; I don't remember what, and neither does he, but it was probably something fairly innocuous, like tattling. Most little brothers would exact their revenge by socking you on the arm, or pushing you down, but not William. He had a far more sinister plot in mind.
William's closet and my closet backed up to each other, and each one had a couple of shelves over the clothes bar, stacked high with the usual clutter. Over the top shelf, positioned where it couldn't be seen, William somehow managed to bore a hole, from his closet to mine. Through this he threaded a long piece of string, which went into an opening in the top of a small cookie tin that he hid on the top shelf in my closet. He attached the line to several nails, so that when you pulled on the string, it sounded like chains rattling.
The stage was set. William waited until everyone had gone to bed, then yanked on the string: clank, clank. Clank, clank. "MAMA DADDY MAMA DADDY THERE'S SOMETHING IN MY CLOSET!!!" They rushed in, and looked in the closet, then waited to see if it would happen again, but all was quiet, and they went back to their room. Just when everybody was almost asleep: clank, clank. Clank, clank. Having already been traumatized by seeing the movie Thirteen Ghosts too many times at the Ritz Theater, I became hysterical: there was a ghost in my closet. Mama ended up sleeping in my room, and of course, with her there, the ghost was silent.
"On Saturday," Mama said, "we're going to clean out your closet, and get to the bottom of this." This gave William time to remove the contraption, and put a small piece of tape over the hole, so when the closet-cleaning took place, nothing was found.
The cookie tin was reinstalled, and the little "hauntings," heard only by me, became regular occurrences. "Want to hear something funny?" William would ask his buddies Bruce Pearlman and Ronnie Blanton, inviting them to spend the night on the weekends, and letting them participate in the joke. I don't think Mac was a party to William's little mischief.
This went on for years, at irregular intervals. The ghost would go silent for long periods, only to resurface from time to time, usually after I had incurred William's wrath over something or other, but I never made the connection. Having concluded that the ghost was a benign force, the earlier hysterics subsided, and when the clanking started, I'd call out a sleepy, "It's at it again!"and go back to sleep. Eventually, my only response would be, "G'night."
Quite a few years later, after I had graduated from college, I was standing on a chair, looking for something on the top shelf of my closet, when I saw a string coming through a hole in the wall. The string was still tied to a handful of nails inside a cookie tin, and I realized with a sense of loss, that what I had come to affectionately call "my ghost," had only been my bratty little brother.
1 comment:
Too funny
Post a Comment