Growing up in a family with two brothers and a sister, you would think I would learn to be tough and fearless. I mean I should at least be tougher than my mom’s burnt chicken, and more fearless than O. J. Simpson is of the Police. When you have brothers and a sister, who needs to learn Kung Tae Kwando Fu? Family is God’s way of preserving humanity through the ancient art of self defense.

My brothers and sister are at their happiest when they can terrify me into a blubbering blob of jello. They are the reason my hair is gray! Ok, it is really blonde, but still I’ll blame them for being blonde.

However, my brother and sister don’t shed a light on my friends…it is like the show Scare Tactics meets Punked. It would be like Ashton Kutcher coming into your dreams and playing a horrible prank on you that scares you to death in your sleep. You know what they say happens if you die in your dreams…you die in real life too. I don’t want to die!

Needless to say, I am a wuss. Anything that goes bump in the night makes me jump. For example, I work at a kid’s party zone. I organize the party rooms with cake and ice cream and decorations and so on. One day I had a Star Wars themed party and the parents went all out with balloons, table decorations, masks, etc. They even brought this bigger than life cut out of Luke Sky Walker or Anakin or some person and they put him by the door to exit. I was coming back from blowing up the balloons when I caught something out of the corner of my eye. It was huge and looked like it was coming towards me. I dropped all my balloons, screamed and jumped on top of the table where most of the employees found me. Needless to say, terrifying cut out cardboard people should be banned from party places.

Now, my friends have found my weakness…terror. I never know where they may be. In my closet hiding between my clothes, under my bed ready to grab me like the Boogie Monster, or running through the door and catching me changing into my pajamas. It is there goal to see who and when they can scare me the most. One of these days they are going to scare me so bad I am going to whollop them and give them a fat lip, and then let’s see if they scare me again!

They even have a term they use to describe the way they scare me. It is called “You have been Katied.” Yes, I have been katied many, many times. The definition my friends call it is the act of being cultured. How in the world is a prank that’s point is to give me a heart attack being cultured??? Are you checking to see if my heart is beating? Well let me tell you if you keep kating me it is going to stop beating soon!

Maybe I will meet that mortician after all, just in a different manner.