Gag (Me With A Spoon)

My family lived on the same street my entire childhood. We had some odd neighbors on both sides. The ones to our left were aging hippies- the man with a huge, bushy beard and his "life partner," a woman who enjoyed not shaving any part of her hairy body and sun bathing in the nude. On the other side of our house, the neighbors changed throughout my childhood. There was the particularly trashy neighbors whose poor maintenance of their yard directly related to me having to be rushed to the emergency room with a pebble and shard of glass in my forehead when I was a kid. There was another family or couple that lived there in my teens and for the life of me, I cannot remember their faces, names, nothing discerning about them at all. I do recall though the time they left a Thigh Master poking out of their trash can which inspired a running gag between my sister, her boyfriend, the Tomato and myself. Why throw out a perfectly good Thigh Master? Apparently, the neighbors realized it was long past the 80's and that Suzanne Sommers was as bad of an exercise guru as she was an actress.

Either the Tomato or Joe snatched the offensive Thigh Master from the trash and placed it surreptitiously in the other's vehicle. Once it was discovered and we all had a laugh, the offended person would snag their chance to hide the Thigh Master in the offenders car and so the game went on and on. You'd never know when it would show up. In your trunk. Lodged under your seat. Under the pile of crap you have in your backseat. Eventually, the game wore itself out but not before we had a great many laughs over it.

The other night, as I was mindlessly watching the boob tube and flipping through the latest edition of Real Simple, I came across a picture of the one, the only, Ms. Jennifer Love Hewitt. I was suddenly struck with an idea. Like if I was in a cartoon, a light bulb would have been drawn above my noggin. My housemate, Mikey, detests Ms. Hewitt, particularly for her painful performance/crappy emulation of our beloved Audrey Hepburn in that made-for-TV-movie. He's probably one of the only hot blooded males in America that doesn't want to shag Little Ms. I Know What You Did Last Summer.

I carefully tore the picture of her out of the magazine (much like the one you see here), grabbed a bit of tape and crept slowly back towards Mikey's bedroom where he was engrossed in killing things in some video game. I tried to be quiet but, well, my mom used to refer to me as a "bull in a china shop" which I think means I lack grace so that didn't work too well. As I tried to tape the offending picture to the back of his bedroom door, a giggle snuck out. Damn that giggle! My giggle has gotten me in more trouble than I care to report. We had a laugh about it and he left it up for a day or two.

But then she started appearing around the house. First on the hallway wall to which I moved/hid her in the pantry near his shelf of food. Then she was in the fridge taped to the cheese drawer. Then she traveled to the spot behind his towel in the bathroom but was quickly discovered and taped inside the shower. I stuck her in his closet. He shoved her under my pillow. . . And now, after taping her to the inside of his medicine cabinet. . .I don't know where she is!

Cue the scary music.

The gag continues. . .Where will she show up next? My underwear drawer!? Talk about pushy advertising.