THE CALLING

It was - like - a...a...CALLING! Yeah! A calling - that’s what it was!! One of those rare moments, it maybe happens once in a lifetime....that changes your destiny - FOREVER. I’m talking about me and my cousin Skinny. A divine intervention that could have only occured in the 1970s.

  The wig head - that’s how it all starts. Y’know those styrofoam heads they put the wigs on, right? Well, both our mothers wore different wigs for special occasions...we never thought anything of it until this one day. We look at the wig head - and simultaneously we know what we have to do...what we are meant to do!

  Borrowing some paint from my sister’s watercolor pad, we paint it like a light brown - it’s already got a nose on it, we find an old pair of  reading glasses, one of his mother’s old wigs, and a baseball cap - and - WALA - it is TRULY a Michelangelo moment - DaVinci - maybe. E This surely has transcended anything we have ever done before. Now we need a body.

      “Hey - let’s break into the Webb’s house - and steal Daniel’s clothes!!”

I don’t know why exactly we have to take his best Sunday clothes, but it’s pure inspiration! Sneakers and gloves soon follow. When we stuff the clothes full of newspaper to create the body -  and then attach the head - well...this is the start of something BIG - really big!

    “It’s alive! Alive! We howl with glee. ( Well, actually, that was the scene from the original Frankenstein movie - but we have vivid imaginations).

    “What should we do with him?!”

    “Let’s lay him down on the side of 3rd Avenue!”

    “ Yeah! During rush hour!”

    “With a knife in his chest!”

    “Yeah! And blood trickling down his chest! We can use Heinz Ketchup!”

    “And A bike lying down right next to him!”

    “Yeah! Hahahahahaha…..

After causing a HUGE commotion and traffic jam on 3rd Avenue - our wildest dreams come true. An ambulance comes screeching down the street, sirens blaring - and thumps to a halt right in front of our dummy! An older guy - an EMT - with an oxygen tank springs out of the vehicle. Within a second or two, he realizes it’s actually a dummy and an angry, baffled scowl creases his face as he puts his hands on his hips, searching the area for the culprits.

  Skinny and me crouch behind the bushes on his front lawn, covering our mouths to suppress our laughter.  A minute later, he jumps back into the ambulance and tears away.

 Me and Skinny never laughed so hard in our lives.