Alpha, I think, would do a nude scene if it was integral to the plot. But just in case I’m wrong, I waited until she left town on a business trip to post this:

Scene: Upstairs shower. [Cue famous "Psycho" violin track]

Alpha: [singing away, bare naked] “…itchy-itchy ya-ya ga-ga, voulez-vous… EEEK!”
Miguel: [Tying tie] “Oh sorry, I scare you, honey?”

It is far too easy to scare people here, at least my wife’s family. Nine times out of ten, someone shrieks when I walk into a room.

In my family, scaring each other was our primary method of communicating our affection, so you’d think I’d thrive in my present environment, but it’s just too easy.

When I was a boy, I remember my mother turning off all the lights in the house and hiding in the closet, wearing a rubber ape mask, when she knew my father would be returning from work.

Mother: “Wraah! Booga-booga!”
Father: “Jesus Christ, Marge!”

I guess we loved each other. My father also used to darken the house and make my younger siblings and me look for him. Whoever found him got to get scared.

For some reason I will never fathom, my brother and sister enjoyed being scared.

Brother: “…8, 9, 10 ready or not, here we come!”
Sister: “He headed down the hall, let’s go.”
Miguel: “Good idea! You guys go first, I’ll, uh, check here in the entry way in case he doubled back. [whistle, whistle] Hm, not in the closet. Not in the vase…”
Father: [In some distant room down the hall] “Wraah!”
Brother and sister: “EEEEK!”
Miguel: “Ah, find him, did you? I’ll just turn on the lights then…”

I am posting this today because I was reminded in an AIM conversation with Spacecheese this morning of one of the perks of being an oldest child: putting your siblings up to things. Spacecheese was wondering whether he should do something.

feralmig: sure go ahead.
feralmig: do it, space.
angrygordon: what the hell.
feralmig: “it’ll be funny”
angrygordon: hahahah
angrygordon: those quotation marks are not encouraging

When we were little, I got my brother to break all the windows in a barn by telling him birds could fly into the panes and hurt themselves. Then I got him to break out every last piece of glass, so the birds wouldn’t cut themselves on the sharp bits.

It wasn’t just a little kid phase, either. Traveling through Austria with relatives prior to my wedding here, I convinced my sister to climb a rickety trellis to a second-storey balcony at our hotel after we got locked out late one night. We’d been drinking lots of schnapps at some pizzeria [the evil midget waitress there kept bringing us doubles, whether or not we ordered].

My siblings are growing more sophisticated as they get older, but I bet I can still make them do stuff, because I am more sophisticated too. We’ll see this summer when I visit the family.

What did you do to your siblings?