Ways to Scare the Pee Out of Me

I have a short pairing of humorous events I've been meaning to blog about for a while, but I haven't gotten around to it. This evening's event pushed me over the edge into blogging about it though. :)


First, you might recall my sister, LaRae. Here we are at Disney World in the Magic Kingdom:
She looks harmless enough, right? Like someone who loves her little sister so much that she's willing to walk around all week at the World in matching sweatshirts and kindly supporting said sister's desire to wear sequined mouse ears all week (despite being 25)? Someone who would never try to, oh I dunno, scare the ever living daylights out of a person, right?

OK the sweatshirts and ear support are deceiving because my sister is a lover of practical jokes. Wait, not really practical jokes, more jump out at someone and scare the poop out of them humor.



So, a couple of weekends ago our parents came in town on a Saturday morning. LaRae called to say they were coming to pick me up early because she needed me to flat iron a spot in her hair, so she came in (I left the door unlocked) without trying to scare me, waited patiently for me to finish my own hair, and had me fix her hair. She then told me to hurry because we were running a little late, said she'd go to the van and bring in the pillows for Mom & Dad, and then wait in the van for me.

I quickly finished cleaning the bathroom, went to the kitchen to feed the dog, locked him in the bathroom, shut all the mini-blinds, turned off all the lights, and started to leave. I grabbed my keys and opened the door only to hear this voice behind me say, "Don't lock me in!" I jumped about 10 feet in the air (quite a distance for a hobbit!), screamed bloody murder, continued to open the door, screamed "S**T!" at the top of my lungs out the door, and started to run (all in about 5 seconds) before I realized it was LaRae. My entryway has a bit of a hallway to it, so she sat on my hall tree waiting to scare me! Turns out Sprinkles actually came to the door, sniffed at the door, ignored LaRae, and returned to me where I was cleaning the bathroom without making a noise! (Some guard dog!) When LaRae and I made it to the van, my dear brother-in-law had actually heard me (8 garages down from my apartment) scream obscenities! Ooops... LaRae said she was proud that I at least was starting to run!



Yes, I scare easily. LaRae LOVES to jump out at me because it's a guaranteed funny reaction.



Wanna know what else scares me? Roaches -- well creepy crawling things in general really. So you remember Paul, right? The friend that came over late one night to save me from the Box of Impending Doom?? Ah yes, now you recall him. Well, Paul and I carpool to work. Today he witnessed (from the passenger seat) as I slammed on the brakes because a small spider was hanging from a web from the top of my window and crawling down towards me. Not only did I slam on brakes, but I also completely lost my train of thought in the middle of a story as I squealed and frantically put down my window and then really really freaked out as the spider went into my window cavity thing instead of out the window. He had to endure the ride with me constantly, spaztically looking at my side window in fear of the spider crawling out.



I can't really emphasize enough the depth of love Paul has for his friends. He is willing to do just about anything for them. So leaving the freaky little spider behind, I came home tonight, chatting on the phone with my sister (yes the one who loves it when I get scared), and O.M.G! There is a GIANT roach on my crown molding in my living room above my hallway door that leads to the bedroom and bathroom. Roaches make me want to throw up. I seriously shudder uncontrollably around them. LaRae told me I could kill it, but what if I made it fall on me?! I decided I would wait out the roach, so I went out on my porch to enjoy the evening.



Thirty minutes later the roach was winning. He had not moved one iota, and he looked like he was just taking a nap for the evening up there. I decided maybe if I turned on all the lights and shined a flashlight on it that it would run down the wall. Don't the scurry when lights come on? No dice. Roach - 1, Joanna - 0. After frantically ducking through that doorway a few times I decided I needed to call in my secret weapon: Paul.



Turns out he was bored and waiting on his wife, Jennifer to come home, and he said he'd come help me. Whew! He came over to vanquish the giant roach of doom, and I swear that the first words out of his mouth when he saw the thing were, "wow that is a giant roach!" Ha! See, no exaggeration! Paul confirmed the hugeness of the roach. He kindly scraped it down into a cup, threw it over the balcony, and saved my sanity for the night. I paid him two Cadbury eggs. I think it was a fair trade off. :) So, thanks Paul! You rock!



OK, so that's two ways to scare the pee out of me (thankfully not literally): jumping out at me and roaches. We'll save other ways for later. Speaking of scared though, incidentally my dog scares easily too and is scared of thunder, a trait that was all too evident this morning at 6 am (30 minutes before I needed to be up) as he stood ON me and barked every time the apartment shaking thunder occurred. No, he can't be scared quietly and cuddle under the covers with me. Instead, he has to yell about it. I guess that was just his way of opening the door and yelling "S**T!" into the breezeway, so I shouldn't be too annoyed.