Do you remember the first time you were ever scared? Like adrenaline pumping something is going to get me and I don't know what, scared?
I do.
My Mum had asked me to retrieve something from my bedroom closet. At night. After dark. I don't recall what is was or for what reason but I remember entering my bedroom in the dark (possibly because I was too young to reach the light switch) and opening my closet door and being completely convinced at once that something sinister lurked there amongst the hanging clothes. I'm pretty sure I did not come back down the stairs with what it was I was asked to get.
I. Was. TERRIFIED.
It was my first experience that I can remember feeling that way.
Do you remember the first time you ever scared someone?
The look they had, the feeling you got when that look was because of something you said or did?
I do.
I was about 5 years old and I pretended that there was a massive spider behind the head of my brother in the kitchen as we were eating a breakfast that consisted of puffed rice. That's right. Puffed Rice Cereal. You know...Sugar Crisp without the sugar. It was like eating tiny pieces of styrofoam. Basically.
Anyway. I have no idea why I wanted to scare my little brother other than the fact that that is just what siblings do to one another because it's entertaining.
So I said something like, "Ohmygod...ohmygod. There's the biggest ever spider behind your head. DON'T MOVE! DO NOT MOVE....or it will bite you!"
The look on his face was enough tothisday to make me laugh. Utter terror.
Do you remember, if you have children, the first time your child showed the first signs of being scared? For my husband and I it was when our first son was about 10 months old. My husband put on his black driving gloves as he was getting ready to leave for work and the look in Adrian's eyes was enough to tell us those gloves were the most horrifying things he had ever laid his big blue eyes on.
Being awesome parents that we were, we thought how HIL-AAARRR-IOUS to hold those black horrible gloves up to our baby's face and see his terrified reaction over and over...and over again.
This is where we would have MASSIVELY failed had there been some sort of parenting exam before we conceived our precious young one. But since there (INSANELY) is no test of that sort we continued to be entertained (and perhaps dug a huge financial hole into our son's future therapy) by our first baby's look of horror.
Oh that's right. Don't even pretend you didn't do the same thing with your child. Don't. Even.
So this allll brings me to this evening's shenanigans. And I'm not talking about my sons'. I blame it on my husband being away for almost two weeks and wanting to shake things up a little in my house. Because I enjoy making my life more difficult than it already is. Because by day 12 apparently I've lost more than a few of my marbles and think it would be super funny to scare the shit out of my children. Before bedtime.
It was late. After bed time hour. And dark. They insisted they were still hungry and needed a bedtime snack. They ate their yogurt and my littlest stopped eating and insisted, "I hear the sound of a skirt."
What is the sound of a skirt you ask? Perhaps a rustle? Perhaps the real question is what 4 year old says, "I hear the sound of a skirt?"
That would be mine. Yes. That would be mine.
So--ooo. Being the warped individual that I am, this strange sentence made me think of the black tulle skirt that I'd been making in my bedroom. The black skirt that happened to be residing in the far back corner of my bedroom. The skirt from my 'Dark Fairy' costume that I'd tried on for them the other day which kind of freaked them out.
"I hear it too! Maybe it's the magical fairy skirt! Maybe it's come alive!" I say and look at my sons'. My oldest looks a bit scared. My littlest, who mentioned the sound, not so much.
I continue because I've obviously lost my mind, "Okay...let's all go up the stairs together...but me first."
We reach the top of the stairs and I tell them to stay outside of my bedroom door. I crawl around our very high bed to the other side where the skirt resides.
Now we all know when we tell our children NOT to do something, generally speaking they will do the opposite.
Just as they walked into the room I threw the skirt over the bed and yelled something unintelligeble like "AAAHHGGBUULLLLLAAAA".
I scared the shit out of them. My littlest who wasn't scared at the beginning began to cry saying, "You scared me!". And my eldest became a statue.
Me?
I laughed for about .5 seconds and then felt horrible. What kind of Mother does that to her 4 and 5 year old?
But now that they're in bed sleeping I am greatly hoping that this discourages them from crawling into bed with me and keeping me from precious sleep due to their terror of that living evil black tulle skirt that sits breathing darkly in the corner of my room.
Perhaps it wasn't such a bad idea after all.
