Another Myth Debunked

I was recently reminded about an incident earlier this year where I managed to lock myself out of my car. I now feel qualified to offer advice about how not to go about resolving the situation.

I was at a gathering of fellow photographers, 300 miles from home. My car actually does everything in its power to make sure you can’t lock the keys in it. If you try to lock the car from the outside while a key is still inside, it’ll emit a nice long beep as if to say, “Yo! Moron! Your keys are in the car!” But I learned that if you physically click the lock button and shut the door, you can indeed lock the key inside.

There were probably 20 of us standing around evaluating the situation when one of them suggested a rather unorthodox idea. He said that he had heard that if you call someone who has access to the wireless key, they can point it into their cell phone while you point your cell phone at the car. The wireless signal will transmit through the cell phone and will unlock the door – what a cool, clever idea, right?

Well, it would indeed be pretty cool if it worked. Here’s what happens for real. First of all, it means that I had to call Mrs. Smoot and admit to the fact that I had locked myself out of the car, several hundred miles from home (and this was with a car we had owned for less than a year).

Second, it means that I spent a good 5 minutes wandering around the car, pointing my cell phone at it from every conceivable angle, looking like a complete wonk.

And finally, it means that there are probably a couple hundred pictures of me doing all of this, considering I was doing it in the company of a bunch of photographers.

Little Smoot's 15 Minutes of Fame

Little Smoot is enjoying her 15 minutes of fame. A few months ago she asked me to take a picture of her with her 3 million Webkinz (that's only a slight exaggeration) so we could send it to a magazine that showcases a few kids with their collections in each edition.

Frankly, we had forgotten all about it since we sent the picture back in August, and hadn't heard anything back from the folks at Plushie Pals magazine. But yesterday friends of hers at school said they saw her picture, so she and I began an two-hour odyssey in an attempt to find a store that had the magazine in stock.

After scouring a few locations that normally have it on their shelves, we finally found it at Barnes & Noble. Or possibly Borders. I always get those two confused. Of course we had to dodge the paparazzi at every store.

Anyway, if you happen to stumble upon the new Plushie Pals magazine (Christmas edition), you'll see Little Smoot surrounded by her little friends on page 15.

Tis the Season

I have come to hate my Christmas lights. I have gotten my “dancing Christmas shrubs” working quite nicely, although there are a few strings of light that only light half way, and that drives me berserk. The lights that really give me fits are the ones that go high up on our highest gutters. I am incapable of putting those things up without muttering some very un-Christmaslike words in the process.

Yesterday afternoon was slightly less frigid than recent days, so I thought I’d attempt to get those things into place. I spent a good hour and a half messing with them, and I’m no closer to having them up than I was beforehand. I’m not sure what prompts me to torture myself with these things every year in the first place. I highly doubt that there’s a passage in the Bible that says, “And thou shalt illunateith thine dwelling with thy brightest of twinkle lights,” or whatever.

Anyway, before attempting to string them up on the house, I plugged them in to see if they’d light properly. And only about half of the lights were working. This was actually not such bad news since the lights usually work 100% well when I first test them. They typically wait until I’ve gone through the endless struggle of putting them on the house, and then they’ll fail miserably. So I headed off to the hardware store to buy some more of the stupid things. It really is a good thing that the hardware store is pretty close to home, given the number of trips I make down there this time of year.

I picked up some replacement strings of light, and started working on getting them in place. I don’t have access to a ladder high enough to reach our highest gutter, so I use the ladder I do have, along with my special Holiday Extendable Stick (get your mind out of the gutter; it’s a stick designed to reach Christmas lights into place, not whatever perverted thing you’re thinking), to put those little plastic doo-dads into place. Then I use the stick to drape the lights over the plastic things until the lights stretch the length of the front of the house.

This is where the nasty, non-Christmas words come into play. Invariably, when I try to attach the strand of lights to the first plastic thing, it’s always too heavy and winds up pulling the plastic thing down, along with all of the lights. In the true holiday spirit, I’ll scream non-Christmas words as I thrust the stick directly into the ground like a spear. Fa la la la la.

When we first bought the house, I used to worry that while I was adding lights I’d fall from the ladder or electrocute myself on the nearby power lines. Now I’m not worried about that at all. In fact, sometimes I root for electrocution or a fall from the ladder because that would give me a great excuse for saying the heck with the doggone lights.

So the whole mess is still sitting out there with the lights bunched up on the ground and the ladder waiting for me in the garage. And the Holiday Stick is stabbed into the permafrost of our yard. I can barely wait to continue the process.

ZAP! You're Gone!

Every young student dreams that someday one of his or her teachers will actually go certifiably insane. We certainly had this dream in our school, and many of our classmates got to experience the ultimate thrill: they got to watch the teacher go insane right before their eyes!

You’ll undoubtedly think that this story is purely fictional, but it really did happen. This isn’t one of those stories, like the ones about people who wake up in an unfamiliar bathtub full of ice and with missing spleens, or whatever.

Mr. D., as we’ll call him, was the librarian at the high school. Apparently this must be a much more stressful job than we had imagined, what with the constant fear of paper cuts and such. One afternoon, some kids were making more noise than what is appropriate for the hallowed grounds of a library, and Mr. D. asked them to be quiet.

Well, as school legend has it, instead of hushing up, one of the students made an obscene remark to Mr. D. For a few moments, Mr. D.’s face began to turn red with rage, and eventually he pointed two fingers – his pointer finger and his pinky – at the student, and yelled, “ZAP! YOU’RE GONE!”

The story would have been plenty amusing enough had it ended there, but Mr. D. continued zapping students and objects in the library. As we have heard from extremely reliable sources, he began spinning a globe, zapping off countries. And he even made it into a hallway where he zapped some fellow teachers.

Fortunately, the State Police barracks was directly across the street, and a car was on the scene very quickly. As the story goes, Mr. D. was restrained and led to the police car. But even while restrained, he managed to zap the car with his arms behind his back. And he refused to get in the car “because it had been zapped,” naturally.

Of course, being high school students, we all handled this incident with extreme maturity and dignity, greeting each other in the hallways with the pointer and pinky fingers extended and a friendly, “Zap! You’re gone!” for years to come. Strangely enough, that was the last we ever saw of Mr. D.

Famous? Schmamous.

There are some people in the world that are famous, but for the life of me I can’t quite understand why. Paris Hilton is an obvious example, but at least she has some redeeming qualities in the sense of being rather easy on the eyes.

Let’s review a few others. Kathie Lee Gifford is certainly a prime example. Our local NBC affiliate replays the Today Show during the afternoon. When it comes on I have to quickly scramble for the TV remote for fear of losing brain cells with each additional second of exposure to her. What qualities does she have that qualify her to be rich and famous? Surely most anyone can sit in front of a camera and giggle about various things. Come to think of it, I actually met her one time several years ago. That probably accounts for much of my brain loss.

Dr. Phil is another one. I caught the tail end of yesterday’s show as I was waiting for our local news to start. The theme of the show was shoplifting. Insightful as always, Dr. Phil suggested to his guests that shoplifting was wrong, and perhaps they should change their ways. Amazing stuff. I can't help but think that if I had a show my advice could potentially be just as helpful. If I had a guest on my show and he had been convicted for beating the elderly, I'd tell him, "Stop beating the elderly!" Pretty much on par with Dr. Phil's insightful help, I think.

Then there’s that Jared guy from the Subway commercials. He lost weight by eating sandwiches from Subway, and now he’s filthy rich. There’s just something about him that makes me want to inflict physical harm upon him. I've eaten plenty of subs at subway, and they certainly haven't made me all svelt and fit. Come to think of it, eating their subs haven't made me famous either.

I'm a Toasty Cinnamon Bun

Ok. I’m ready for Spring. Yes, I fully realize that it’s not even technically winter yet, but with temperatures barely making it into the 30s these past few days, I say the heck with it, let’s just skip a bunch of these nasty months and get right to May. Or perhaps June.

The real bugger about the cold weather is that I find it nearly impossible to get out of bed these mornings. There was an early episode of The Simpsons where Homer is all snuggled in his bed in the morning, and he describes himself as a “big toasty cinnamon bun.” He decides that he never wants to leave his bed, at least until he realizes that he has to “take a whiz.”

That’s pretty much identical to my recent mornings. I feel like I’m glued to the bed, and I wake up with the blankets so tightly wrapped around me that it’s difficult to get up, even if I want to. I don’t even like to have my head poking out of the blankets because I can feel the cold air on my nose.

And then every 6 minutes the clock radio turns back on, and it seems to always turn on in the middle of the weather forecast, which only encourages me to slink further into bed and hit the snooze button again. I’ll decide that I’m never leaving my bed. Until I realize that I have to take a whiz…

The Dancing Christmas Shrubs

I think Mrs. Smoot is getting increasingly concerned about my plans for our outdoor holiday illumination this year. I haven't really given her a lot of details about my plans, and she keeps coming home to find more and more extension cords, along with more electronics filling the garage.

I don't plan on going fully crazy in the Clark Griswold "Christmas Vacation" spirit of the season or anything like that (the house in the picture is actually a mile down the road from us... I have no intent on blinding people with something like that). But I do have some fun things in mind this year.

Since I spent many years as a disc jockey, I happen to have all of my old light show stuff stashed away in the attic. The light show was designed to react to music. Seems like a waste to have this sort of ability stuck in the attic, eh?

So I spent a recent warm afternoon disassembling some stuff from the regular light show, and attaching it to Christmas lights, which adorn the shrubs in our front of our house and along the driveway. I'm calling this year's display "The Dancing Christmas Shrubs." I've gotten things to the point where there's an amplifier and CD player attached to the lights, and the shrubs will now light to the beat of the music.

At this point I have only tested it with Halloween music since that's what was in the CD player. The lights are pretty dramatic to watch during "The Monster Mash," although that's not going to get too many people into the Christmas spirit.

Once I'm done, I'll have it set up so that people can tune their car radios to a FM station where I'll broadcast the music that will be simulcast with the dancing shrubs. Our neighbors are just going to love me! Stay tuned. I'm sure I'll create my first ever "blog video" on the subject before too long.

So Much for the Final Frontier...

I've always been fascinated by the space program. I even drove to Florida several years ago specifically for the chance to see a shuttle launch in person (the photo on the right is one I shot during that trip to see the launch of Atlantis -- STS-101 -- in May 2000). Despite the inherent dangers, I have always thought that I'd jump at the opportunity to take a journey into space. There are just a couple things that come in the way of that dream.

For one, I'm vastly underqualified. If I were in charge of the family checking account, I'd still be writing entries like I did in college, like, "The bank says I have this much," because my math skills just aren't that great. I'm sure NASA requires a little math, as well as a few other skills I don't have. I could probably overcome this whole issue simply by winning the lottery so I could pay a few million to be a space tourist, I suppose.

The other stumbling block is a psychological issue I have, which pertains to the current mission that launched on Friday evening. The crew of the space shuttle Endeavor is delivering some new equipment to the International Space Station. The intent of the mission is to expand the living quarters to the extent that six people can live at the station for lengthy periods of time.

The component that gives me some concern is a device that will recycle human sweat, urine and other waste back into drinkable water. Mmmm mmm! Pass me the bottle, I'm parched! I suppose I'm just not astronaut material if I have issues with the idea of chugging my own pee, let alone the pee of my fellow astronauts.

As we were watching the launch on Friday night, I saw two different reporters showing off bottles of water that had been recycled this way, and one of the NASA-TV commentators demonstrated its safety by taking a hearty swig on camera. I'm confident that as soon as the camera was off of him, he undoubtedly sprayed it all over the place with a mighty spit, and ran screaming down the hallway to a room where he could have his mouth disinfected. At least that's what I would have done.

The Extra Ingredient Is Glove

Let’s wrap up the week with one final story (for now, anyway) about the nasty service we typically get at restaurants. I’ll avoid identifying this restaurant by name, again choosing only to note that it rhymes with Schmexas Schmodehouse.

A couple years ago Mrs. Smoot, Little Smoot and I headed to our local location for a meal. We ordered our food, and they brought out my salad and some dinner rolls. Little Smoot was eating her dinner roll when she bit into something strange. I looked at it and thought that somehow a piece of lettuce from my salad had gotten stuck to one of her rolls.

But I looked at it more closely and realized that this thin, white-ish thing she pulled out of her mouth wasn’t lettuce. No, it was a portion of a rubber glove, of all things. Mmmm… mmm! Just the kind of thing to make us really look forward to our main course! How in the world does part of a rubber glove make its way into a dinner roll? I can only hope that the cooks are using these gloves when they’re baking the bread, and they’re not using the gloves to conduct some sort of twisted surgical procedure in the back room.

As a disclaimer I should note that we are not the kind of nutcases who hide disgusting things in our food in hopes of cashing in with a large lawsuit. No, there really was part of a rubber glove in the bread. We pointed out this gem to our stunned waiter, and throughout the rest of the meal a parade of people came over to apologize to us. It was kind of amusing, really, because we could literally look around and see various employees whispering the story to each other as they were gesturing toward our table.

Toward the end of the meal our waiter came over and told us, “We’ll be taking something off the price of your meal for this.” He paused for a moment and added, “We’ll be taking a LOT off your meal.” Actually, they didn’t charge us at all, which seemed appropriate. We do go back to this restaurant rather often, and we generally have good experiences there. We have joked with waitresses about this experience since then, and many of them actually say they’ve heard about this incident, even though it was a few years ago. We’re legendary!

Mis-Steaks Galore!

In Part 2 of our series of bad restaurant experiences, we’ll discuss an incident a few years ago at a local steakhouse. While we won’t identify the restaurant by name here, we will say that it rhymes with “Bone Bar Bakehouse.”

We went out to eat with good friends of ours, and at that time their son and our daughter were very just a few years old. So many things went wrong that night that I have succeeded in forgetting much of it. I can recall that the service was super painfully slow and rude, our orders were almost all completely wrong, and they had run out of many, many stupid things. For example, they were out of bread, which made it tricky for them to make cheese sandwiches for one of our kids. I believe they substituted by using bottoms of buns instead of sliced bread, which was just weird.

I believe they were also out of milk, and after getting the kids excited about the fact that their meals came with ice cream, our waiter announced that they were out of it, too. I should point out that this restaurant was practically across the street from a grocery store, so one would think that in a pinch they could have walked over and grabbed a few essentials.

I wrote a snotty note to the company after this experience (always write these notes the night they happen; you get the best, most sarcastic results this way!), and they sent a very nice, lengthy note back. They apologized profusely for all of the trouble we had, and told me to use the letter to redeem a free meal for all six of us at our convenience.

When we finally decided to return to the restaurant (actually, we went to another store in the chain, figuring that the original location’s employees would spit in our food after reading the letter), they bent over backwards to kiss our butts. It was awesome! We had a wonderful meal, and at one point or another, every manager and employee seemed to show up to make darned sure we were having a great experience. The letter apparently put fear into their hearts.

Some number of months later we went back again, and wound up having yet another miserable experience of doom. Go figure. We don’t go there any more, mostly out of fear. Tomorrow I’ll wrap up the bad service series with yet another bizarre steakhouse experience: “The extra ingredient is glove!”

Apology Cake for Everyone!

I am a bad service magnet. If you ever go out to eat with me, you are very much at risk for having a meal so profoundly bad that you’ll be compelled to write a snotty note to the corporate headquarters. We have had so many bad service experiences that I think I’ll break this up into a miniseries of blog entries.

For today’s entry, we’ll focus on an experience last summer while we were driving out West. We stopped at a restaurant I won't identify (its initials are A&W, though) near Butte, Montana. I ordered a bacon cheeseburger, which naturally came without bacon. Since I had paid extra for bacon, I sent it back. Many eons later, they brought me a brand new burger, which was also missing the key ingredient of bacon. The third time, they finally brought me a burger with bacon on it. Granted, the burger was cold, but I didn't possess enough morbid curiosity to see what they'd bring me next.

Little Smoot had ordered macaroni and cheese from the menu, but the girl taking the order explained, “We ain’t got none.” And needless to say, they screwed up Mrs. Smoot’s chicken order while they were at it.

Later, the store’s manager came around and offered virtually everyone in the store a cake to apologize for the fact that the crew was screwing up everything in sight. She explained that the store was under new management, and they had fired the entire staff in recent weeks “because they were all druggies.” She told us the old staff was replaced by straight-A students, presumably including the girl who told us they “ain’t got no” mac and cheese.

So we continued on our journey and enjoyed our apology cake that night. Tomorrow: adventures at a local steakhouse.

Knock Knock...

I seem to have woken up to a bit of a dilemma this morning. Since Little Smoot didn’t have school today, we slept in a bit. When I got up, I looked out the window and I could see that well-dressed young people are knocking on our neighbors’ doors, which can’t be good news.

Presumably these are either Jehovah’s Witnesses, or they’re selling vacuum cleaners. Or both… who knows? And no offense to them, but I’m uncomfortable dealing with either of those situations because they both tend to have trouble taking “no” as a valid answer.

Usually I can do a fine job of pretending not to be home. The problem is that today is also Garbage Day, so I need to somehow sneak out of the house long enough to get our bags to the curb without being detected by the Jehovah Vacuum People. The garbage truck could be here at any moment. If these folks are observant, they’ll undoubtedly detect that I am home, so I have to develop Plan B.

One time, as Plan B, I pretended that I don’t speak English, which just isn’t very convincing on my part. I can’t fake a foreign accent without laughing, so that gives it away right there, unless I pretend to be from a country where people giggle a lot for no apparent reason.

Another strategy might be to simply keep the garbage for an extra week, but things are going to get a bit nasty in the aroma department around here. Well, I’d write more about this dilemma, but if I don’t come up with something soon, I may wind up with a religion that sucks (get it… vacuum cleaner? Sucks? Never mind…)

Babies Don't Like Me.

I have a knack for scaring the living daylights out of babies. We went out to dinner this weekend with our neighbors, who have a shiny, new baby. Little Smoot played peek-a-boo with her for a bit, and was very successful at making the baby giggle at her. I also giggled. Every time Little Smoot would hide her face, I would wonder where she went. Then she’d move her hands, and THERE SHE WAS! Hilarious, and highly unpredictable.

Anyway, toward the end of the meal I thought I’d give it a whirl, so I put my hands over my face, waited a few seconds, and then let out a bit of a yap as a surprise element when I opened my hands. Well, the surprise aspect of it apparently worked since I alarmed her to the point that she shrieked with terror for several moments, while I tried to figure out how I could crawl under the table or merely become invisible.

Earlier in the week, I had been photographing preschoolers, and one of their teachers had this gag where she’d pretend to tickle me while I was taking the pictures. I’d let out a yap in hopes that the kids would find it funny, and they’d smile for me. It worked like a charm -- every single kid thought it was just hilarious, and I successfully got them all to smile for their photos.

But apparently the same yap that works for the preschool kids is a bit terrifying to a baby. Since I wasn’t able to become invisible or duck under the table, she simply looked at me with a high rate of suspicion for the rest of dinner.

Wakka wakka wakka

If you want to feel incredibly old, I highly recommend playing video games with a child.

Little Smoot just got a new game for her Playstation 2, Spyro Dawn of the Dragon. Unfortunately, it supports a two-player mode, so she talked me into playing it with her the other day. I had no freakin’ clue in the world what I was doing. There were times where she told me I was “doing a good job,” but to be honest, I was just poking at random buttons very quickly. And I think she was just patronizing me.

She’d tell me “Hit the R2 button and make sure you change weapons or you’ll run out of breath!” Sure, honey, I’ll get right on that.

I really hate to admit it, but video games have just kinda passed me by. Back in the olden days, I used to create my own games on the super sophisticated Commodore Vic 20. Granted, I’d always get to a certain point with my development of a game where something didn’t work and I’d be stuck. Then I’d say the heck with it.

As a result, I developed a swell series of “Video Games You Can’t Lose.” I created a version of Pac Man where you could gobble up all of the dots on the screen, but I couldn’t figure out how to get the ghosts to chase the Pac Man. So I eliminated the ghosts entirely. You could go through and eat the dots and not suffer any consequences at all. And you could actually eat through the playing board, making it easier yet.

I also developed a wonderful version of Pole Position (a road racing game) where you drove a car on a perfectly straight road, and there were no other cars. No matter what, you came in first place every time. Ahhh, those were the days.

Oh Deer

Well here it is, my least favorite time of the year: deer hunting season. I don’t mean hunting with a gun in the woods… I mean clobbering these stupid animals with my car. In the past I have hit so many deer with vehicles that I should be set for life when it comes to my venison needs.

Every November I wind up with a bad case of Deer Paranoia Syndrome, or DPS. Just last night I was driving home from a church function and a deer wandered out in front of me on a busy street near home. It actually emerged between two fences, stood on the curb as I slammed on my brakes, and then it gave me that look. You know the look. It was one of those deer-in-the-headlights kinds of looks, I guess you could say.

One time I was headed to work at a Pittsburgh radio station, and I was driving there from a couple hours away. I rammed into a deer and it crumpled the car’s front fender so badly that parts of the fender rubbed up against the tire every time I hit a bump. That certainly made for a fun drive. Oh, and it was Mrs. Smoot’s car, so you can imagine how thrilled she was when I turned it back over to her.

Another time I ran into one on the PA Turnpike while traveling through a construction zone at 50 mph. Oddly, it barely caused any visible damage, but still cost more than $800 to fix. Yet another time, I bonked into one within 300 feet of my apartment. That time, the only damage it did was that it knocked the deer horns off my car. For those of you who don’t live in deer-infested areas, “deer horns” are these stupid plastic things that we can put on our cars to make some sort of high-pitched noise while driving, and they’re allegedly supposed to scare deer away. Suuuuure, they do.

Beam Me Up, Wolf!

We’re all a little bleary-eyed around here since we’ve been up late two nights in a row. Monday night was the Steelers victory over the Redskins, and then last night we were up watching the election returns.

Little Smoot has been rooting for John McCain, so it was a disappointing night for her. She sat there clutching her “Country First” campaign sign she got at the rally last week, and she grumbled every time they changed another state to blue on the big map on CNN. She still hasn't washed her hands after shaking hands with McCain last week. Granted, she probably would have forgotten to wash her hands for that period of time anyway, but still.

At one point she looked at me and gave me her own expert analogy, which I thought was pretty good coming from a 10-year-old. She explained, “It’s like John McCain and Barack Obama are in an actual race, and McCain keeps stopping to tie his shoes.” Being as sympathetic to her as possible, I told her, “No, it’s more like he bent over to tie his shoes, but he fell down a cliff and into a river, and the river is sweeping him backwards.” She didn’t seem to appreciate my analysis.

Speaking of analysis, did you watch CNN’s coverage last night? I am not sure whether to be in awe of their gadgets, or simply be frightened. At least twice during the night, Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper interviewed correspondents via hologram. Seriously. Wolf and Anderson were in New York, but they had some magical, Star Trek-like thing where they’d beam correspondents in from Chicago or wherever, and it would look like the other person was standing with them in the studio.

Granted, the hologram people had a weird blue-ish glow around them and it looked like they had mild disorders of the central nervous system, but I’m sure the technology is still in its infancy. Plus there’s just something weird about the idea of being “beamed by Wolf.” I dunno.

I’m not sure how many other cool gadgets they had because I spent a lot of time channel surfing. Thanks to DirecTV, we have a single channel where we can literally watch eight channels of coverage simultaneously! Could life get any better? I think not.

Me Lose Brain? Uh oh!

Mrs. Smoot and I have been talking about how we both have been losing our minds lately. In my case, I have precious little remaining sanity in the first place, so any degradation of my brain is even more detrimental than it would be for most people.

I have noticed this problem over the past few years, and it certainly isn’t getting any better. At home I’ll go downstairs with a single purpose in mind. I’ll wander around the basement aimlessly for a bit, and maybe do something while I’m down there, and I’ll come upstairs and realize that I completely forgot to do whatever it was I had intended to do in the first place.

On the plus side, this helps me get some much-needed exercise, what with all of the extra trips I’ve been making up and down the steps all day. I’m thinking about attaching Post-It notes to my forehead before I head off to do a task, but I keep forgetting to buy Post-It notes.

I hate to think this means I’m getting old. I turned 40 this year, and I really don’t think that this qualifies me as being “old” by any means. But I did have a rather disturbing encounter this weekend that is making me reevaluate the current state of my elderlyness.

We were visiting some relatives out of town, and we stayed at a hotel. When I checked in, the woman behind the counter asked me if I “had any AAA or AARP discounts.” AARP!?! Oh, man. I wasn’t ready for that one. It's not like I drove really slowly into their parking lot with my left turn signal stuck on, while wearing a furry hat.

When she said that, I didn’t even know how to respond. Being a smart alec, you’d think I could have come up with something clever to say. Or maybe I should have just punched her in the head or something. But instead, like most of my elderly kinfolk, I just stood there with a vacant look on my face.

The Great Grandma Eyeball Episode

We took Little Smoot to a Haunted House this weekend at a middle school. We expected it to be incredibly lame considering that it was being run by kids, but we were pleasantly surprised that the students involved with it pulled it off very well! At one point, one of the “ghouls” was walking around with a fake eyeball, asking if any of us would be willing to provide another human eyeball for him.

Well, I have to tell you that I will never be freaked out by some kid with a fake eyeball, not after the “Great Grandma Eyeball Episode, Circa 1978.” I was something like 10 years old, and was visiting my great grandmother, who lived with my grandparents. She had a downstairs apartment at their house, and for some reason she had one of her eyes removed and replaced with a glass eye.

I assume she had this done for sound medical reasons, as opposed to doing it solely for the purpose of being able to pull off one heck of a prank at any given moment. I know that if I were in this situation, the temptation of pulling pranks with it would be way too great ("Hey, I'm keeping my eye on you...!")

I don’t know how glass eyes operate nowadays, and frankly I don’t want to know, but back then, great grandma had to remove her glass eye at night. There was a period of time where her eye muscles had to gain enough strength to keep it firmly in her eye socket. I was visiting with her one day, and as she was talking, her glass eye went, “PLINK!” out of her eye socket, coming to rest up against the inside of her eyeglasses, and she was oblivious to the fact that it had even happened. I have never seen a Halloween mask that comes remotely close to being as scary as seeing my extremely elderly great grandmother sitting there with one eyeball dangling off her face.

I can still recall the exact words I said at that moment. I said, “AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!” as sensitively as I could, and I ran the heck out of there, never inhaling to replenish my ability to scream, and setting the world record for sprinting up a staircase.

Halloween just isn’t nearly as creepy as some of my real life experiences, it turns out.