Fight or Flight

When I was in high school, we lived in a house in a little city in the middle of Houston, TX. It was an older home from the 1970s that has since been torn down and replaced by a monstrosity. The front door opened up to a quite large entry/formal dining room. Off the left of that was a door that led to a long hallway. All of the bedroom doors opened off the hallway, and at the very end of it was the bathroom door.

My girlfriend at the time, KE, didn’t enjoy being home, because her single mother was out on dates a lot, which meant that she was home alone. So, she spent the majority of her time at my house. It was during one of these evenings, when we were there by ourselves, that I got the brilliant idea to scare her.

She was on her way to the bathroom, and I hid myself in the darkened doorway of my parent’s bedroom, which was just to the right of the bathroom. The moment that she flipped on the bathroom light, I jumped out and screamed, “BOO!” KE recoiled away from me and screamed, the terror obvious across her face. Then, she swatted me, as I laughed, before going into the bathroom to finish what she had started.

A few weeks later, we were once again alone in the house, and KE decided to get her revenge on me. So, she hid in the same darkened doorway that I had hid and waited for me to go to the bathroom. As soon as I turned on the bathroom light, she jumped out and screamed, “BOO!” Unfortunately for her, I didn’t have the same reaction as her. I screamed, but instead of recoiling, I sent a reactive punch straight into her chest. It knocked her backwards into the dark, while a look of horror crossed my face as I suddenly realized that it was her.

I rushed to her to see if she was all right. She was furious with me, and probably furious in general that she hadn’t come out on top with either of these scaring encounters. But she never tried to scare me again. They say people either have a fight or flight reaction when encountering a scary situation. She learned the hard way that night that mine is definitely fight.

The Mimic

MT was telling us a story about her daughter, OT, when OT was four years old. OT was riding in the car with her father one day in traffic, when someone suddenly cut him off. Out of habit and instinct, he called the person an f***ing moron and didn’t think anything about it. A few days later, MT and OT were in the car, when someone cut MT off too. She brushed it off, but all of a sudden OT screams from the backseat, “F***ing moron!”

Caught completely off guard by her sweet, four year-old swearing from the backseat, MT tentatively asked, “Where did you hear that word?” OT said, “I heard papa say it.” “I see,” MT said. “And do you know what it means?” OT replied, “I think so.” “So, how would you use it in a sentence?” MT asked. OT thought for a second. “I don’t know. I guess f***ing tomatoes.” MT was still shocked, but she also couldn’t fault her daughter’s logic. Frankly, she didn’t like tomatoes either. But she tried to downplay it, so she told OT that that wasn’t considered a very nice word by most people, and she shouldn’t say it anymore.

A few nights later, they were all sitting around the table, having dinner. MT’s husband was kind of agitated, and his thoughts were confusingly all over the place. He was in the middle of a rant, when all of a sudden, OT looks up from her food and says, “What the f*** are you talking about?!” NT was stunned into silence. MT had to run out the room, so that she wouldn’t laugh in front of them.

The moral of the story is that kids are, in fact, listening. And they will repeat the worst things we say in perfect context.

Bum Rock

A house around the corner put some decorative rocks in their flowerbed. This declaration isn’t all that astounding on its own. However, two semi-round rocks were placed next to each other with a slight space in between them, and with their pinkish coloring, the effect looks like a large bum protruding from the dirt getting sunburned in the afternoon sun. Every time I drive by them, I get the distinct feeling that this was done on purpose to unsubtly moon all of the passing cars. Which if I’m honest, does not offend me so much as makes me laugh.