Church Kids

Let's get crazy and mix it up a bit! I'm taking a little break from more serious tones of previous posts, and giving you a bird's eye view into my formative years. Ready for a spin down memory lane? Thought so. Picture it, early autumn, 1990'ish. I was 13 years old, and the proud owner of one of those Casio keyboards that had a Bossa Nova setting. Yep, 49 keys of synthesized bliss. It was in this same era that motion picture magic horrified every youth group in America with the Christian classic, A Thief in the Night. Think Red Dawn, but with very little hope, and that a Patrick Swayze prototype would die almost immediately. On a stack of Bibles, any time one of those films were played, the power would go out and everyone in the room would inevitably scream. Well, being the wretched little minion that I was, and having younger brothers who were ripe for the picking, I devised an amazing plan that would keep me in stitches for months. Now as I continue with this story, keep in mind that I had 2 friends who served as incredible accomplices and they were JUST LIKE ME!! We had angel faces with devil horns back in the day, and if our parents had known even half of what we were up to, I'm assuming most of our life choices would have been seriously frowned upon. HAHAHA! I digress... So after viewing one installment in the aforementioned series, I decided that the right thing to do was make someone think they had been left behind, it was the only thing that made sense to me, I had received a clarion call and I would respond! That very moment is when the Casio was catapulted to gold status. Not only did it have a Bossa Nova setting, but a trumpet setting as well. As I began to fine tune "the sound", I was mentally narrowing down which one of my siblings would be the victim. I felt driven like Jake and Elwood, and knew that my choice could make or break the legendary nature of this herculean event. The selection was finalized and planning went into overdrive. In less than 3 hours, what I considered to be the prank of a lifetime would go live. As fate would have it, Mama had to run to the grocery store, and that left me and my friends enough time to pull it all together. The third story of our house had huge closets that were deep enough to hide multiple people in, so 5 kids and a dog were stuffed inside while my poor brother had gone into the basement to look for something at my request. I followed him downstairs after a minute and asked him if he had seen Mama or Daddy, of course, I knew they weren't home, but he didn't realize it. He began to look for them, and with no success, they were seemingly gone. I moved on to ask him if he knew where anyone else was. No one could be found. Surprised??? As I sensed that his panic was elevating, it was time to throw in the trumpets. I made an excuse to run upstairs and turned the volume all the way up. The blaring beauty was almost too much for me to handle. I wanted to erupt with laughter, but had to keep going. I couldn't stop. I was all in. Had. To. Make. It. 99 & 1/2 wouldn't do! I screamed down to him, "Did you hear that? It sounded like trumpets!!" While I don't think the volume was quite enough to make the impact I was hoping for, I was able to convince him that the angel Gabriel had indeed made that fateful call. It was just us. We were the only ones in our family left. But to err on the side of caution, we were going to make one more sweep of the house before we lost our collective minds. I led him upstairs and told him to check the closets, because you can never be too sure. When he opened up the second door, the payoff was even more than I could have imagined. 5 howling kids came flying out of the closet, and then the dog jumped on him. He screamed bloody murder at me, because I was on the ground beside myself with tears. I don't think anyone has ever hated me with a more fervent passion than he did at that moment. In fact, he wouldn't talk to me for 3 days. Was it wrong? Absolutely. Do I have more stories to tell? And then some. I'm pretty sure I could have been Maria, and she said it all in her song to the Captain. So I leave you with an ode to my childhood. I must've done something good. Enjoy! http://youtu.be/UetJAFogqE4