it was the fall of 1982. the damp air lingered of the familiar smell of crunched, wet leaves and they kept sticking to my pointy boots. it was so dark we could barely see the houses outside of town until we pulled in the driveways. the plastic mask on my face smelled weird but i liked it. i just needed to stop licking my lips because they were getting chapped and i hated that chapstick crap mom made me use.
rex and annie gave us apples again this year. well foo. i guess that’s okay, at least that’s one thing dad won’t eat! papaw gave us an apple, too, but mamaw of course threw in lots of candy. its so cool she puts them in the special little bags. and she remembered i love baby ruth!
my bucket was getting pretty heavy and we were headed home. cyb wanted to trade, and mom hollered at us one last time that there was no trading and it was all going in one big bowl when we got home. the BIG ORANGE bowl.
that’s really the only time i remember seeing that bowl, during halloween. it was plastic, thick and kinda like melmac only not shiny. it was pretty dang scratched up, too. i bet it used to be mamaw’s or something. anyway, i dont know what it was really made of, but seeing that bowl was ALWAYS a good thing.
i thought it was dumb we couldnt just eat however much candy we wanted to that night. we tried to sneak a few pieces in the car, but i SWEAR mom has radar in the back of her head!! as soon as she heard one little candy wrapper crinkle, we’d see her laser eyes in the rearview mirrow. geeeeezzz. it didnt help that cybil wasn’t a good sneaker. i guess she couldnt help it she was only 3 and not experienced and as wily as me yet.
maybe when im a mom i’ll have that radar, too. that would be cool to bust my kids when they’re doing something REALLY bad. cause eating candy is not a crime, ya know!
so we got home and my dad instantly starts pilfering through our hard-earned bounty. cybil began to wail and her vampire fangs fell out of her mouth onto the floor. i picked them up to put them on the table—ewww, slobber bubbles and red lipstick! i sighed and went to the bathroom to change out of my witch’s garb. the green goopy makeup on my face was really starting to itch, too.
mom let us each pick a few pieces of candy and said after bathtime we’d need to head on up to bed. which was good, cause my 8-year-old body was achy from all that hunching over all night like an old hag!
once we were in tucked in, i heard cyb sniffling in her bed. (we shared a room.) dad yelled up the stairs and said she better stop crying or he’ll give her something to cry about. i whispered over to her, “what’s wrong? does your leg itch again?”
she got to wear a walking cast because of her club foot surgery. when her leg itched she needed it scratched NOW. we usually used the handle of a flyswatter, cause it was the only thing thin enough to fit into the cast.
“jos, i…” she started to talk in that “im-getting-ready-to-weep-really-loudly” voice and i shhhhhhushed her and said, “just tell me quietly!”
“jos, i want some more candy. daddy’s gonna eat it all! its MINE!!”
“yeah, i want some more, too. but we gotta do what mom says or we wont get anymore at all.” of course i said this in all big sisterly authority, but deep down i felt the same as her.
CLICK. then a bright light shone from the middle of our bedroom floor. sccrrrrape—crinklecrinkle—clunk. there was an air vent that went straight through the floor of our room into the kitchen. you could see the top of the fridge and the counter and some of the floor.
and the BIG ORANGE bowl. full of candy. on TOP of the fridge.
sccrrrape—crinklecrinkle—clunk. i peeked over and saw dad putting the BIG ORANGE bowl back on top of the fridge. cyb started to whimper.
“see, i told you he’d eat it all!”
“girls, GO TO SLEEP!” dad yelled up at the kitchen ceiling. man, did dad have the mom radar, too??
i put my finger to my lip. CLICK. we sat in the darkness as dad left the kitchen.
a few minutes passed as we pouted.
“hey cyb, wanna steal some candy?”
“but won’t daddy and mommy see us when we walk past??”
i smirked and leaned over and pointed to the air vent. she giggled and giggled and so did i. a major event in our life history was about to take place.
we could hear dad and mom’s laughter filtering up the stairway along with tv noise, so we knew the coast was clear.
the first obstacle was getting out of bed without them hearing. our floors were creaky and old and cyb’s cast would probably clunk. we waited until dad busted a gut again and then quickly shuffled to the vent. we waited and listened. no movement downstairs. success!
whew. now removing the vent cover. it was one of those really heavy, metal covers that looks like a grid and was about 12 inches by 12 inches. luckily, it wasnt screwed to the floor. we saw dad take it off before so we knew it would be a piece of cake! well, we hoped.
as i was wriggling the cover with only a second to go, the kitchen light CLICKed back on! AACCKK! :-O dad was getting more candy!! :-O :-O cyb and i froze and i prayed in my head, “please God, dont let dad look up! i swear i’ll leave him some candy! and please God, don’t let cybil make any noise and ruin it all!”
sccrrrrape—crinklecrinkle—clunk. i heard dad mumble and sort through the handful of candy he’d grabbed, then throw a few empty wrappers back in the bowl. geez!! hurry up already. the vent cover was digging into the fleshy parts of my fingers. it hurt sooo bad, but i knew i couldnt budge or we’d end up getting the beatings of our lives.
after what seemed like years, he finally left. CLICK. my feet had fallen asleep because i was on my knees the the whole time, sitting back on my feet. cybil grabbed the vent to help me and it made a loud scratching noise. my mouth flew open with no sound coming out for a second, then a firm KKCCcccKKKK cause i knew mom’s radar wouldnt miss that one!
we heard her annoyingly say from the living room, “john, i think that damn mouse is in the ceiling again. did you hear that??”
“hmmm, i didnt hear anything.” Crinklecrinkle. munchmunch. “i’ll set a few more traps in the morning.”
i glared at cyb, tho i doubt she could see my ticked-off-edness in the dark. “let me do the grown up work, okay? if you want the candy then let me be the boss.”
“okay.” she rolled her little toddler eyes. grrrrr.
i painstakingly pulled the vent the rest of the way out and set it off to the side. i felt the blood rush back into my fingertips and they felt hot. owwww. now the vent opening seemed like this huge, vast vortex or black hole in space or something. and there was candy at the center of it.
looking back now, had inspector gadget made his debut i’m sure i’d have wished i had go-go-gadget arms. cause dangit, my arm wasnt long enough to reach through the vent opening and grab some candy. im also sure that had macgyver been around in 1982 we would have felt pretty dang cool and macgyver-like creating the contraption we ended up makin to get some’a that candy!
“we need something to scoop out the candy, jos. how about my flyswatter?”
she handed it to me and i stuck it through the hole. it was definitely long enough! but not enough scooping action.
we scoped around our room, our eyes adjusted to the dark by now. we knew we couldnt get up and walk around or we’d be heard by the parentals. my closet door was open and something caught my eye.
“how about a hanger? maybe we can unwind it and hook something to the end as a scoop?”
i motioned to cybil to stay put and i slowly stood up. CRREEAAAK. “guh, i hate these floors!” i whispered, feeling a bit of a nervous hot flash.
i waited a second and heard dad’s lazy boy foot rest come down. KERPLUNK. i sighed. great, what timing. he went into the bathroom cause i heard the the door close. then mom got up and went into the kitchen.
fortunately, this setback only lasted a minute because soon after i heard mom yell to dad, “hurry up!! its back on!” and she scampered back into the living room.
once we heard the KERPLUNK of the lazy boy again, i slid stealthily over to my closet door. i have to admit i was pretty good. maybe i got lucky tho, cause dad was laughing a lot and they didnt hear the creaks.
i grabbed a wire hanger and it was stuck to another. too late! i already pulled it and a few other ones chimed and clinked as they fell to the wood floor. that’s it, i know they’ll hear that! i was very close to the stairway and they were sitting just below.
but somehow, by the grace of God above, they didnt. i shuffled back to the air vent and cybil had found an old dish towel to use as a scoop.
“why is that up here? that’s one of mom’s dish rags.”
“my baby doll needed a diaper, and this was pink so i took it.”
“oh, uh, okay. please dont tell me it was for Baby Alive??!?”
“uh huh.”
grrrr, oh well, it would have to do. i untwisted the hook and pulled the hanger into a deformed “U” shape and tied the dish rag aka baby alive diaper to the ends of the hanger like a hammock. kinda. somehow, this was gonna haveta work.
silently, carefully, we—*I*—lowered the scoop down the air vent. the rag touched the candy…OOoohhh it touched the candy!! we squirmed.
at first only dad’s discarded wrappers would get into the scoop. but then i poked one side of the hanger into the bowl to kinda coax a real piece of candy into it.
“HURRY UP, jos, im hungry, jos!”
“shut up! i’m trying the best i can. do you want to get caught?? and get your butt beat and never eat candy again?”
“no.” she sighed. “but still hurry up, jos, kay?”
annoyed, i tried to be as quiet as possible, and suddenly, without warning mom yelled up the stairs, “why are you girls still awake? dont think we cant hear you up there. GO TO SLEEP!”
we got really scared. sometimes mom comes up after she yells at us like that just to make sure we do what she says. i was so frozen, and just yelled back a short, “kayyyy.” i tried my hardest to ventriloquist-ize my voice so it sounded like i was in my bed.
“we’ll be quiet now and stop walking around!” cyb followed.
“cyb!! SHUT UUUP!!” i hissed and tried to keep my voice from echoing down the vent. fortunately mom must have been distracted by the tv, because she didn’t answer.
this was just taking too long. i was really about to give up. getting in heaps of trouble would not be worth a few pieces of candy. but instead i went ahead and tried to scoop again. amazingly this time, everything fell into place and the candy cooperated. 3 pieces!! come on up, beauties!!
cyb grabbed the candy and put it aside. “can you get one more so we can each have two?”
“i’ll try.”
CLICK. someone was in the kitchen again. it must have been mom because i never heard the lazy boy. OHHhh my gosh, i saw the top of her head. she was getting in the fridge—miracle whip?
we were frozen, again. on the brink of being detected by her RADAR. we waited.
she made her favorite—a mayonnaise sammich. in the meantime, i was still so afraid the radar would doom us. i mean, she was only like 4 feet away from us!! surely she’d hear us breathing or SOMEthing!
she stopped in front of the fridge, paused and looked around. my chest hurt so bad, i almost cried. suddenly her eyes came into view as she looked up…
but just at the BIG ORANGE bowl.
WHEW. !!!
she started to reach for it and then changed her mind. she grabbed the mayonnaise sammich from the counter and left the kitchen. but she didnt turn off the light.
“katy, you left the light on.”
“damnit john, i just sat down. i’ll get it next commercial.”
KERPLUNK. shuffleshuffle. CLICK. shuffleshuffle. KERPLUNK.
“you’re such an ass.”
“hey, you dont pay the bills.”
cyb and i giggled to each other at such trivial nonsense and got back to the task at hand.
i must have mastered the scooping maneuver the first time, because i easily captured three, yes one…two…THREE *CRUNCH* THREE more pieces of candy. and one was a baby ruth!!!
knowing mom and dad would be coming to bed soon, we knew our job was only half done. we still needed to eat the candy AND put the vent cover back.
we snarfed it scooby-style and i said, “we should put the wrappers back in the bowl with dad’s. if mom finds them up here we’re dead.”
of course then cybil just tosses one nonchalantly down the vent and it floats gingerly to the floor. i could see the snickers logo smirking back at me. GAK!!!
“gimme those.” i snatched her other two wrappers and my three and stretched my arm down the vent, gently dropping them all in the BIG ORANGE bowl.
i hefted up the vent cover and the grid instantly inflicted pain as it slid into my finger creases; they were still sore from taking it out. but i made quick work of it, and fortunately it went back in with no problems except for a few more “mouse noises.” heh.
“those were soooo good, jos,” cyb said licking some caramel off her finger. we’ll have to do this again tomorrow night.”
WE?? i didnt answer. i didnt think i could handle that much stress again. little did i know i’d grow up to be a non-risky kinda person, cause that would be just about the sneakiest thing i’d ever do.
we both got into our beds and fell asleep dreaming our baby ruth and snickered-up dreams.
the next afternoon, mom told us we could have some candy for dessert after lunch. she pulled down the BIG ORANGE bowl. sccrrrrape. she looked in the bowl with one eyebrow up and a hand on her hip. cyb and i looked at each other with a wave of OH CRAP.
she set the bowl on the table for us to pick. i saw our wrappers and dad’s in there. she watched us—was that suspicion in her eyes? then i bravely (and bluffingly) said, “mom, where’s all my baby ruths?”
she leaned over and shook the bowl around. “john! no wonder you had a stomach ache last night…you’re worse than the kids!! what am i doing to have to do, hide it from you?”
dad comes in all macho-y and surveys the damage. “WHAT? i didnt eat all that. how many trips did YOU make to the kitchen last night??”
cyb and i looked back and forth at them in unison.
dad strutted out of the kitchen doing his smart-butt daddy walk and mocking mom in a fake high voice, “no wonder you had a stomach ache…” we all giggled.
mom crossed her arms. “whatever, john. whatever! you’re still an ass! josey, i’ll ask mamaw for a few more baby ruths today when i stop by there, honey.”
“and more snickers, too, mommy?”
“yes, cyb, i’ll get more snickers, too.”
CHA-CHING.
************
and they never knew the truth until 20 years later.
HAHAHAHHAAHAA!
baby steps!
