My sister called me today to let me know the end really is near for our friend Bob who has been fighting ALS. She was really upset and usually calls me because my bizarre sense of humor tends to make people feel better and laugh. Well today we somehow got on this memory from our earlier childhood.

I am not sure exactly how old we were at the time but we had to older than 9 and 12 because we were living in our house that my mom bought all by herself. Now this was a pretty unusual thing as she was a divorced woman and the year would have been 1979 maybe. Anyway it must have been summer vacation because I awoken to my sister telling me there was a man in the house. Now my sister is a hypochondriac at times and a big fat fraidy cat. So I told her no there wasn’t and to go back to her room and go to sleep. Then all of a sudden I heard a mans voice talking on our phone. This is back in the day of wall phones with cords so when I carefully peeked out of my room I could see the phone cord stretched down the hallway. I freaked out, but remained calm and did what my mother always told us to do. I got my sister and we went out my bedroom window. Thank God it was on the front of the house and not the back. So we went across the street to the neighbors to call my mom at work. Now my mom remained calm to us on the phone but freaked out because she remembered there being a strange car parked in front of our house when she left for work that morning. So she called the cops and headed home. We watched the cops show up at our house and go in. They then came and got us and said the person had identified themselves as our aunt. (My aunt is a lesbian (the man) but was a huge secret back then because people tended to think that preference preferred kids as well. That is stupid and my aunt only was involved with women but we didn’t share with anyone because no one would be allowed at our house. Oh she did live with us for a year or two but that’s a different story). Ok I will admit that I went just a little nuts. To the point the cop had to restrain me and take me off the front porch. This could have easily been an episode of cops. So when my mom finally arrived and found out it was her sister, she was livid. She had to take off work (not really accepted back in those days) and worry the whole way home that we could have been killed, only to find out it was her sister talking in her butch voice. Let’s just say my aunt did get the scare of her life when she looked up and the cop had his gun pointed right at her head, asking her what she thought she was doing.

As my sister and I were reflecting on this story she was cracking up laughing. I said see I did it again. You called me crying and you hang up laughing. It is a gift from God I suppose. So if you ever need a laugh just call CR, I have many many more of these stories!