Manhunt

Halloween was frowned upon in my church, I think it's frowned upon in most churches, so to give us something to do while all of our friends were trick-or-treating the church would have a Fall Festival. All the kids would wear costumes, the parents would bring cakes, and cookies, and caramel apples, there was a ton of candy, we'd play games...it was basically celebrating Halloween, but we'd have a prayer first.
Our church was surrounded by three other churches. There was a Methodist church across the street, a Catholic church to our left, and one of those churches where the people roll around in the aisles to our right.
The Catholic church was beautiful. It was a three story, stone building, with beautiful stained glass windows lining the sanctuary, and a 100 ft. steeple with a huge brass bell that would toll everyday at noon. I used to wish I was Catholic just so I could see what it looked like inside.
Behind the Catholic church was an old graveyard that seemed to stretch out for miles, and miles. The perimeter of the cemetery was lined with unwelcoming wrought iron fences, entangled with overgrown weeds and ivy. It was creepy.
On the night of our Fall Festival, me, my sister, my brothers, and a few of the other older kids were sitting on the front stairs of our church trying to think of something to do. "Let's play manhunt." my brother suggested. Everyone quickly agreed, but he didn't stop there. "Let's play manhunt in the graveyard."
Simultaneously, we turned and looked through the spiked, iron tips of the fence and into the dark cemetery. This was the worst idea I had ever heard, but of course I was the only one who felt this way. Before I knew it teams had been decided and we were jumping the fence to go hide.
Two days before the Fall Festival, an elderly woman in our congregation died of old age in her sleep. Her funeral was set to take place the day after Halloween, for superstitious reasons I assume.
I was so scared running through that graveyard. After about ten rounds we decided this was going to be the last one. I saw a big tombstone next to a tree and decided I'd hide there. I could hear that my brother was almost done counting, so I ran as fast as I could and dived behind the grave. In mid-air I realized I was falling into a black pit. All of a sudden I slammed into the dirt and looked up to try to see where I was. At the top of the hole I could see the tombstone, I had fallen into a grave.
I completely froze. There was dead silence up above, not even a breeze or the sound of my friends screaming as they played their game. I didn't want to look down, for fear that I'd see someones rotting corpse. I had no idea what to do. So I did what every little girl does when she finds herself alone on Halloween night in someone else's grave. I balled my eyes out.
I came from being frozen with fear to hysterical in a matter of seconds. I was screaming, crying, and pulling on every rock and root I saw, trying to climb out of the hole. It seemed like I was down there for hours when I finally heard someones voice at the top of the grave. "Megan? What happened? How'd ya get down there?"
"I tried to hide behind the tombstone and fell, please get me out." I sobbed.
His hand lowered down and I snatched it up as quickly as I could. He pulled me up out of the grave and hugged me. It was the husband of the elderly woman who had died two days before. "Let's get you back to your parents." he said to me, and walked me over to the church.
I was covered in red clay, and tears were streaming down my face when we got there.
"Megan! Where have you been? What were you doing over in that graveyard?" my mom yelled as I walked into the social hall. I tried explaining, but she cut me off. "I can't believe you could be such a bad example to your brothers and sister! You're the oldest, you shouldn't be trying to get them to run around in cemeteries!"
Apparently, while I was falling into an open grave the rest of the kids saw my mom come outside and ran out of the graveyard before she saw them playing in it. When I wasn't there, they told her I went into the cemetery. She was so mad. She told me to go clean myself up in the bathroom and then to wait in the car until they were ready to leave. So, I did.
The next day we attended the funeral of the old woman. After the funeral service the elders of the church carried her casket next door, and the congregation followed. I was confused as they led us over into the cemetery. When they stopped and set down the casket we were in a very familiar spot, it was the exact grave that I had fallen in the night before.

Bonding Time

During our entire childhood my dad worked as an orthopedic salesman for the Zimmer corporation. His job required him to work long hours and be gone 90% of the time, and the remaining 10% he dedicated to the most important thing in his life...hunting. I cannot even begin to explain how many deer heads have been mounted on our walls throughout the years. We once had a lamp made out of antlers and half of a bear that looked like it was tearing through the side of our house in our living room. Yuck.
My mother and father would fight constantly about his absence in our lives. "You're missing everything!!" was one of her frequent arguments. Eventually, and mostly just to shut her up, my dad decided to compromise. So, he started making us hunt with him. Anyone who knows me knows that I would rather die than hurt an animal, anyone who knows my brothers knows that they've probably killed more animals than they've eaten in their lifetime. They were thrilled at the thought sharing what they already did everyday with our father, and not getting in trouble for it.
One week my dad took them down to Bass Pro Shops, and they stocked up. I don't think they left until they had bought every camouflage item the store carried. Bows, arrows, boots, pants, jackets, vests, hats, gloves, even underwear, which I still don't understand.
I guess when you're super into killing animals for sport you and your friends split the cost of leasing property where you think a lot of game will be. At least that's what my dad and his buddies did. The place they were leasing was about 2 hours away from our house. It was a huge piece of land with a barn to store their 4-wheelers, a forest with a tree stand on every tree, and four lakes, each with it's own duck blind. If hunters had their own heaven, this was it.
When morning came on the day of their outing I thought for sure my brothers were going to die of excitement before they even left the house. They had been up since 7:00 am, waiting for my dad to get ready so they could head out. All of a sudden my dad's beeper started buzzing. The looks on my brothers faces as they realized their hunt was about to be called off was devastating even for me. Sure enough my dad had an emergency at work and rushed off to the hospital leaving behind two sad little boys.
My dad had set up one of those deer shaped, foam archery targets in our backyard. Determined to hurt something, my brothers gathered up their bows and arrows and went outside for some target practice. I decided I'd go with them, mostly because I had never shot a bow and arrow before and wanted to try.
It started out fun. We took turns picking a place on the deer and seeing who could get the closest to shooting it. Then, in the bushes next to the target we heard rustling.
My brothers immediately loaded and pulled back their bows, waiting to end the life of whatever came running out. I can remember watching their weak little arms shake from the tension of the strings, and the sounds of them breathing as if a Velociraptor was about to charge out of the woods. They had almost given up when their prey leaped from it's hiding place, it was my kitten Tommy. Before I could scream "Stop!!" there were arrows raining from the sky. Luckily, they had terrible aim and Tommy ran up and jumped into my arms, unharmed.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" I yelled at them.
"We didn't know it was Tommy!" my brother replied "You're not supposed to let her out here anyways!"
This was true, my mom would kill me if she knew I had let her outside.
"I didn't let her out. The door must have been left open."
"Well, we're gonna tell mom you let her out and almost got her killed."
"By you! You're not even supposed to have your bows out here without dad. If you tell on me I'll tell on you, too."
"If you tell on us, we'll shoot you and your dumb cat!" my littlest brother shouted.
"Then I'll have two things to tell on you for!" I shouted back.
I decided I should take my cat back into the house before my mom saw her out there, so I turned around and started walking away. I made it about 20 ft. before hearing the sound of the bow being released. The noise was quickly accompanied by excruiating pain in my leg, I looked down to see an arrow sticking out of my left thigh.
Luckily, my brothers had two different types of bows. The older one had a compound bow, which definitely would have shot the arrow through my leg. But the younger one, who shot me, had an old longbow that only lodged it in about an inch.
I cried for about 10 seconds, and then realized the ass beating my brother would get if I could just make it inside to tell on him. It wasn't often that I truely believed there was no way I could be in trouble for this. I turned around to look him dead in the eye, and not even the tears on my face could mask my smile. I limped triumphantly to my house, up the stairs of our porch, and through our front door.
"Mom!" I screamed, as I flung the door open.
No reply. I limped into the living room, she wasn't there. I yelled up the stairs, she didn't answer. I looked in the kitchen, the dining room, the bathroom, she was no where to be found. Then I heard the metal doors on our basement slam outside. She had gone down to our freezer to get a box of bagel bites to make us for lunch. I went to meet her at the back door, as I walked through the doorway of the kitchen the feathers on the arrow hit the molding and the arrow fell onto the floor just as she walked in.
"Ben shot me in the leg with his bow and arrow!" I yelled, pointing at the cut in my thigh.
She didn't even look at the cut before responding "I saw a cut on your leg earlier Megan, stop trying to get your little brother in trouble."
"What! I have lots of cuts on my legs and they're probably all from him! This one is in the shape of an arrow tip and it's still bleeding. The arrow is on the floor!"
"So, the arrow magically ended up right next to you as I walked in the door?" she asked as she opened the box of bagel bites and laid them out on a pan "Why don't you go play outside and I'll call you when lunch is ready."
"Mom! Ben shot me in the leg and you won't even look at the wound!"
"Megan, just go to your room and calm down. I didn't raise you to speak to your mother like this or to lie to get your brother in trouble."
I was so angry, I picked up the arrow and pushed it in front of her face. "That's my blood, mom! That's my blood!!"

I spent the next five days in my room as punishment for lying about being shot, and for letting my cat outside. To this day my mom doesn't believe that my brother did anything to me.

Burnin' Up

For the past 21 years, my family has been vacationing at Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL. Our favorite place to stay is Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort & Campground. We are not tent people. It's hard to fit six people in a tent, and even harder to keep six people happy in one. Especially if they're my family. This is one thing that my dad definitely understood, so we started buying campers.
Our camper was a 40 ft. white and blue Starcraft trailer with two slides. It slept seven people comfortably and made our camping experience much more enjoyable. But, there was still a problem: driving from Maryland to Florida.
We pulled the trailer with a brand new black Dodge conversion van. It had three rows of seats, the back bench folded down into a bed, there was a TV, separate radios for the front and back of the car, we'd bring a cooler stocked up with food, millions of blankets and pillows, games to play, and books to read. It was as luxurious as you could get for a van stuffed full of people, and my parents really tried to make the trips bearable. But none of this was any sort of comfort as we'd start on the long, long trail to the Sunshine State, and the 20+ hr. drive usually resulted in a three day recovery period upon arrival.
When I was turning 14 my parents asked my sister and I what we wanted for our birthday. "To go to Disney!" was our response. So, they started planning a trip. They booked our campsite for a week at the end of March and we were so excited!
My dad likes to start driving in the middle of the night. "It makes the time go by faster." he always says. A few days before my birthday we were packing up the camper and van and getting ready to leave late that night. It takes me no more than 5 seconds to pack for trips and I hardly ever forget to bring anything. Following my usual pattern, by 4:00 pm I was done packing and really bored. So I started looking around my house to something to occupy my time.
Fireworks are super illegal in Maryland. You can imagine my delight when I came across a cache of 4th of July leftovers in our cellar. I immediately ran upstairs to get my brother and show him what I had found. He was less than impressed, so I grabbed some firecrackers and went off to have some fun.
We lived in a 100 year old farm house, on 16 acres of land, in a tiny little neighborhood across the street from a private airport. Our house was surrounded by a forest that went back and behind our neighbors homes on both sides, it was all our property. I decided to take my fireworks to the left of my house, behind where one of my neighbors lived. She was no less than 70 yrs. old and never left her house so I knew she wouldn't tell my parents if she saw what I was doing.
I might have picked the worst time of year to light fireworks, everything in Maryland was dry and we hadn't had rain or snow in a month or so. I set off a few strings of the firecrackers, but it started to get dark, so I walked home.
A couple hours passed, we were still packing up so we could be on the road by 12:00 am when my dad noticed something strange from our kitchen window. "Oh my God, that house is on fire!" he screamed. My brother's, sister, and I all ran to see what he was talking about. As I looked out the window my heart dropped to the floor. To the left of our house we saw flames flickering over the tops of the trees and a tower of smoke lifting up into the sky. It was the exact house where I had been lighting firecrackers just hours earlier.
My dad was on the phone with the police who said they had already received calls and the fire department was on it's way. All of our neighbors were standing silently in their drive-ways, mesmerized by the glow of the flames. My family walked outside, the smokey smell was so strong it was hard to breathe. "We need to keep packing." my mother stated. And at that we all walked back into our home.
"What's the matter, Megan?" my dad asked, "You look as pale as a ghost. Why don't you go..." I assume he would have finished this sentence with "lay down", but before he had a chance I threw up all over the living room and then collapsed on the floor.
There was a knock at our door that woke me up. My mom was sitting on the floor with me stroking my hair. I could hear my father open the door where there was a police officer standing. "Good evening, sir." his deep voice echoed through my house "I'm sure you know by now that your neighbors home was destroyed by a fire tonight. We just wanted to come by and let you folks know that the elderly woman who lived there was found dead inside the house. We're still not completely sure what caused the fire, but as soon as we know anything we'll be sure to keep you updated."
I started to get nauseous again, so my mom helped me into the downstairs bathroom where I threw up three more times before falling asleep on the floor.
When I woke up I was in the van. They had folded down the back seat and laid me on the bed. There was a bucket next to me on the floor and a bottle of Pepto-Bismol on my stomach. In sickness or in health, we were going to Disney World.
The drive was horrible. It was always horrible, but this time I had my neighbors blood on my hands. I spent the entire ride throwing up. I couldn't sleep. I didn't speak. I just kept thinking about the fire, about our neighbor, about prison.
After around 8 hours of driving we started seeing the signs for South of the Border. I remember one sign in particular making me especially sick "Pedro's fireworks...does yours?" I knew we were going to stop there, my brother's always complained until we did.
When we pulled in I stayed in the car while they stretched their legs and my brother's ran around like jerks. My dad parked at the fireworks stand and went inside to stock up on everything we didn't have in Maryland. I started crying looking at it. My mom came back to the van a few minutes later to check on me and found me hysterical in the back seat. "Oh my sweet girl, I'm sure you'll feel better once we get to Disney." she said in a calming voice, "You don't have to get so upset."
"I'm not upset about that!" I sobbed back at her.
"Well then, what's the matter?"
I started breathing heavier, I could feel my heart pounding as I gathered up the strength to confess to murdering my neighbor. Right as I opened my mouth, my dad opened the door. "I just got a call from Howard," he started, Howard was one of our nosy neighbors "I guess the old lady down the street started an electrical fire from her stove and died from carbon monoxide poisoning from all that smoke."
"Oh, that's so sad!" my mom replied "The poor woman."
All at once I felt the color rushing back to my face, my heart jumped back into place, and I smiled the biggest smile imaginable! I hadn't killed her after all! Not thinking, two words came running out of my mouth. "Thank, God!", I exclaimed.
"Megan!" my mother shouted at me, "I've never known you to be so insensitive."
"Oh, sorry......I'm gonna go pick out fireworks with the boys."

The Less Fortunate

When I look back, 8th grade was definitely the pinnacle of crazy when compared to the other six years spent at my Adventist school. The summer before classes began the church announced that they would be closing the school at the end of the year due to "financial circumstances". Of course, everyone knew it was really because our principal was clinically insane and they couldn't find a replacement.
Mrs. B lived in an off-white double-wide mobile home with her three, I'm almost positive, gay sons. It was in the middle of a valley surrounded by the scariest looking woods I've ever seen. When you walked inside you were stepping into an alternate universe. It was every hoarders heaven. A quadruple-wide wouldn't have been big enough for all of her crap.
There were black trash bags piled up to the ceiling and filled with clothes that she had stolen from the Dorcas of our church. Boxes were stacked in every corner, the contents of which were a weird assortment that varied anywhere from puppets and diaphragms, to sega genesis games and cat food.
The kitchen was the worst part of the trailer. The air was thick, like a dead cloud filled with the aroma of cheap floral air fresheners and rotten food, all weighed down with cooking grease. If claustrophobia or the smell didn't get to me, the infestation of cockroaches did.
One Saturday night my family was invited over to dinner and my mom forced me to come. Mrs. B served tacos...not even a crumb of a tortilla went anywhere near my mouth. Now, Mrs. B was not only our head teacher and principal, but the church appointed her the job of leading the congregation in community aid and outreach. While at her house she started discussing plans she had to get the students involved in community service before the year was up.
"There's a Food Bank in Baltimore." she said to my mother. "I was thinking I'd take my boys down there in the morning, then later in the evening we could give the food out to needy families in the neighborhood around the church."
"What a wonderful idea!" my mother replied, but of course she couldn't have just stopped there. "Why don't you take my girls, too!"
I wanted to kill her.
The next morning my sister and I left with our principal and her boys to help our community. When we arrived at the Bank, Mrs. B told us to grab as much food as we could. "Just make sure it's fresh!" she called out as we made our way into the warehouse. I felt strange taking the food. The building was full of homeless, hungry people. I kept thinking to myself "We'd probably be doing a better service letting them keep it."
After an hour or so of perusing, we had a pile of about ten crates ready to load into the van. They were overflowing with non-perishable foods, most of the brands I had never heard of before.
I was so happy when we finally left. The looks on the peoples faces as six, clearly not homeless people carried away the best of the food made me feel so guilty. But, that guilt quickly turned to anger in the events that followed.
"Where are we going?" I asked as we passed the road of our church.
"Just need to stop at my house real quick." Mrs. B answered.
When we pulled up to her trailer she got out and started unloading the food. I almost asked what the hell she was doing, but I was smart enough to realize what was happening. We had just helped her grocery shop at the Food Bank. My sister and I sat silently in her van as her sons took about 6 of the crates inside and put the food away. When they were finished they climbed back into the car like what they had done was perfectly normal, and we drove to the church. I wanted to throw-up.
It took us about 25 minutes to make up baskets with our diminished supplies to hand out to the needy families in the area. I loaded them into a Radio Flyer wagon and dragged it behind me as Mrs. B led the way down the street.
The first house we passed was a dirty, run-down little farm house. The yard was filled with garbage and the lawn was overgrown. There was an old, thin man sitting on the porch in a plastic foldable lawn chair, smoking a cigarette. "Are ya'll givin' out food baskets?" he called down to us.
"Yes, sir." I answered. "Want one?"
"No I don't!!" he screamed, throwing his cigarette to the ground. He then stood up and limped into his house, slamming the screen door behind him. "The last thing I need is your charity!"
"Okay, have a nice day!" I called out after him, and we continued down the road.
We walked for about 10 more minutes and came to a beautiful gated community. Certain that we were passing it I kept walking with the wagon pulling behind me.
"Where are you going?" Mrs. B asked.
I turned and looked at her, very confused.
"We'd have a hard time giving these people the baskets if you're not with us." she continued.
So, for the rest of the day we went from million-dollar door to million-dollar door trying to hand out food baskets to the needy millionaires. One man gave me a $100.00 bill and a bag of his own food because he thought we were collecting for the poor. I kept the money, and ate the chips as we continued through the neighborhood.
After miles of walking, millions of rejections, and dozens of threats to have the cops called on us, we gave up and started to make our way back to the church. I was pretty far behind the rest of the group since I had to pull the food the entire time. As I passed by the run-down farm house the man who had yelled at me earlier called down again. "Ya'll got more food than you started with."
"Yes, sir" I replied "And no one seems to want any of it."
"I'm sorry I raised my voice to you earlier young lady." he said in a sweet voice "Sometimes it's just hard to accept help when you know you need it.
I strolled up his drive-way and handed him the handle of the wagon then reached into my pocket and took out the hundred dollars to give to him. "Enjoy." I said with a smile, and walked back over to the church.
When I got there with no wagon and no food everyone wanted to know what happened, so I told them. "Are you kidding?" my teacher spit out in an annoyed tone. "My boys and I could have kept all that food, Megan. Now we're going to have to go back next week."
Looking back on this I realize the only reason we went to the gated community is because she knew no one would take anything. I'm pretty sure she's going to hell.

A Fainting Spell

I was born in sunny Cape Coral, FL to teen parents on March 21, 1988. We lived there for the first 7 years of my life before moving to Maryland. During the time we spent as Floridians, my parents may have put sunscreen on me a total of three times. As a result, in 1999 I was diagnosed with skin cancer and scheduled for surgery at the Franklin Square Hospital in White Marsh, MD. The surgery took place at 8:45 am on my 11th birthday. It wasn't a serious procedure. I was under anesthesia for less than 2 hrs., and back at my own house before lunch time.
When we got home I was in excruciating pain. To make matters even worse I ended up having an allergic reaction to the pain medication my doctor had prescribed so I just had to suck it up. I walked into my house and my whole family was there. They had been up since I left early that morning and were all sitting in the same places. My youngest brother, trying to be sweet and genuinely happy to see me, ran up and threw his little arms around me. The incisions from the surgery were on my back and the top of my head. It hurt so bad I started blacking out and asked my dad to take me to lay down.
He helped get me up to my room and laid me face down on my bed. A few minutes later I heard my bedroom door creak open and looked over to see my kitten, Tommykins Wommykins Marmalade DeCosta, running towards me. She leaped into the air and slammed down on my back. I woke up an hour later after having passed out.
There was a big pile of presents wrapped in pale pink and yellow paper sitting in the living room for my sister and I. After a lot of complaining on her part my dad carried me downstairs so we could open them together. It took her a little over five seconds to tear into all her boxes. It took me what seemed five hours just to open the first one. It was a sky blue portable cd player with matching headphones. Very practical for someone who has a 20 stitch incision on their head. I let my sister open the rest for me. One present that wasn't wrapped was a huge fleece Winnie the Pooh stuffed animal that I laid on the floor and curled up on like a dog. I don't think I moved from that spot for the next 3 weeks.
Finally, the day came when I was going to the doctor to have the stitches taken out of my head. My dad, mom and I were walking out the door when my dad said something that got everyone in the family excited "If Megan doesn't cry at her appointment, I'll take us all to Cactus Willie's for dinner!" Oh yes, everyone in the family was excited, except for me.
The ride to the doctor's office was horrible, sitting in the waiting room was horrible, waiting for the doctor to come into my room was horrible. I knew that if I cried my siblings would kill me, and I pretty much knew I was going to cry.
After an eternity of waiting, the doctor graced us with his presence and went to work on my head. It was so painful. The stitches had to be torn out with so much force that I was sure pieces of my scalp would be missing when I looked in a mirror. They weren't normal stitches because after the operation they slathered about an inch of a clear sealant on top so that I would be able to wash my hair. I was totally silent the entire time. With every snip of his scissors I closed my eyes and imagined how disappointed my brother's and sister would be if I ruined our chances of dining out.
"All done!" the doctor proclaimed. I couldn't believe it, not a single tear had fallen from my eyes. My head was throbbing, but I quickly stood up and followed my parents out of the room and over to the front desk so they could pay. Next thing I knew I was gazing up at my mom, dad, and about three members of the clinic staff. Apparently I had fainted.
My parents were real sweet to me. They felt terrible that I had held in all that pain just because I wanted us to go to Cactus Willie's. Once I saw that they weren't mad I let the levy's break and out poured all the tears I had been fighting for the past hour.
When we arrived back at the house I still had tears in my eyes. My brother's and sister were playing catch in the front yard, and you better believe they noticed.
"Thanks a lot Megan," my brother yelled at me as I stepped out of the car "you couldn't have sucked it up for once in your life?"
My other brother was holding the baseball that they were throwing back and forth, in two quick motions he threw it as hard as he could at a big tree and then flung his baseball glove off his hand and into the dirt. My sister muttered something under her breath and stormed into the house.
"Stop being jerks and get in the car!" my dad shouted at them.
"Where are we goin'?" my ass little brother replied, with the biggest attitude imaginable.
"To dinner." my dad answered "Megan was good at the doctor's so you should be thanking her that you all get to go out."
My siblings all walked over and got in the car. There was barely enough room for the six of us and their bad attitudes. I was the last one to get in, as I stepped up I smashed my head on the roof of the car and everything went black. The next thing I knew I was laying on my drive-way looking up at my mom, dad, and three angry siblings. I had fainted...again.
"Way to go Megan." my brother said, shaking his head. "Way to go."

Blacks In Wax

From 2nd to 8th grade I went to a private Seventh-Day Adventist school in Joppa, MD. My twin sister and two brothers attended the school with me and the four of us made up about 1/4 of the student body. The rest of our school mates were a group of the most socially awkward and ridiculous creatures ever invented. As for the staff, we had a principal, who was also the only teacher, and a teacher's aid whose only job was to grade paper's.
The school was inside of our church and consisted of one classroom filled with about 20 desks, a second class room with two big tables for doing arts and crafts, and a big creepy basement with brown linoleum floors and flickering fluorescent lights where we'd eat our lunch and play keep away when it was raining.
Now I want to get into the holiday spirit with a story celebrating black history month. Our principal was a big black woman from Atlanta, GA. She was loud, rude, offensive, and very proud of her African roots. When she found out that there was a "Blacks in Wax" museum in downtown Baltimore she jumped at the opportunity to share her culture with the school. So, on a beautiful February day my family, minus my dad, and the rest of the school got into our van's and drove down for a little field-trip.
The trip was pretty normal. Everyone was bored, except of course our principal, as we walked through the various rooms. We acted like all elementary/middle school students act...like asses. We were touching things, laughing, making fun of the statues, and being super obnoxious. I particularly remember a very funny looking black Imhotep.
After about 3 hours of looking at these blacks in wax we were more than ready to go home. My mom had already left the museum to get our car when my principal cried out "Wait ev'rybody! Here's a room we didn't see. Let's look real quick and then we can get outta here." My classmates and I simultaneously sighed and followed her over to a big closed door with a blacked out window pane.
Everything about this screamed "DON'T GO IN HERE!". Next to the door is a warning sign, that no one seems to notice but me. "Very sensitive and disturbing scenes" are the only words I'm able to read as our teacher quickly ushers us through the door and down a dark staircase into the basement.
As we were walking down the stairs I remember turning to my teacher and asking "What's down here, miss?" But before she had a chance to answer me I saw a wax woman hanging by the neck from a tree with her stomach slashed opened and her wax fetus being ripped out by a wax Klan member. It was a lynching exhibit. My principal has just taken a group of children, none of which were over the age of 13, into a basement dripping with gore. I remember her jaw dropping as she glanced around the room. "Surely she's going to take us back upstairs.", I thought to myself. Then her jaw started to move "You see class," she said "this is exactly what I was hoping we'd see today." My heart stopped beating as I listened to her speak to us."It's good to be reminded of the downplayed struggle our people went through." she continued "Let's all take a look around and learn more about our neglected past."
I quickly grabbed as many of the younger students as I could and let them push their little faces into the fabric of my uniform skirt. Once their eyes were protected from the absolute horror of the exhibit I slowly walked with them towards the other side of the room where there was an exit door. I tried to stare straight ahead and block out all of my surroundings. While I was walking I saw my brother's and some of the older boys touching the exposed wax breast of one of the sculptures and then giggling as if they had just gotten to second base. Classy.
I finally made it over to the door and told all the kid's to run out. When we exited the room I saw my mom sitting in the lobby "Why is everybody crying?" she asked me.
"Mrs. B took us into a lynching room." I answered.
"What!?" she screamed, "Where are your brother's and sister? Why did you let them go in there? I am so disappointed in you, Megan!"
Just as she finished yelling at me the rest of our class and teacher came walking out. Some of them were laughing, some of them were crying, some of them looked sick, and Mrs. B looked accomplished. "Well class," she started "I think this has been an excellent field-trip. Tomorrow we can write a report on what we learned, but for now let's get some lunch in our tummy's, you all must be starving."

Pushing Daisies

I used to have this super retarded jack russell terrier named Daisy. She had one brown ear and one white ear, and weighed about 15 lbs. She was 4 months old.
My church did this thing biannually where they'd make all the kids in the congregation perform the service. Someone would lead the congregation in the opening hymn, someone would do the opening prayer, someone would do a special musical number, someone would do the scripture reading, someone would pray about the reading of His word, someone would collect the offering, someone would pray about the offering, someone would tell the children's story, someone would pray for the children, someone would do the pastoral prayer, someone would give a sermon, someone would lead the congregation in a closing hymn, and someone would do the closing prayer. So, they put up the bulletin in the foyer and we all got our part. I was telling the children's story.
My puppy had a million toy's, more than any dog should ever have and definitely more than any deserves. But she had one in particular that she loved like her life depended on it. It was, at one time, a grey wolf, with white tufts of fur on it's ears and stomach and bright blue eyes. But at this point it was an ugly mangled shell, all of it's stuffing was ripped out, it was missing an eye, it's fur was hard and dirty from Daisy chewing on it constantly, and it smelled like rotten Purina puppy chow. Daisy didn't care though, she would just lay on her pillow and chew on that thing day in and day out.
I woke up Saturday morning and realized I had completely forgotten about telling those kid's a story. Church started at 9:00 am and we were walking out of the house when I saw Daisy's ugly wolf sitting next to my brothers really cute Ty beanie baby, Tuffy. "Don't judge a book by it's cover" popped into my mind, so I grabbed those animals and took 'em to church to teach those kid's a life lesson.
My dad never comes to church. Some other things my dad never does is think, close the door to our house, or put our dog on a leash. Later that afternoon when we pulled into our drive-way my littlest brother ran full speed into my mothers arms. He was balling his eyes out, choking on his own breath and just screaming nonsense. Then out walks my father.
"Dog's dead.", he says, completely emotionless.
My brother catches his breath, looks at me and screams at the top of his lungs, "AND IT'S YOUR FAULT!"
At this point tears are running down every member of my family's face, and every member of my family is facing me.
"How is it my fault?", I asked.
"Well," my dad matter-of-factly replied, "you took Daisy's toy. If she had the toy she would have layed on her pillow, but since you had it she ran outside when I left the door open and got hit by a car."
Then my mom glanced at me, shook her head, yelled out a jumble of curse words and stormed into the house. Slowly the rest of my family followed her lead. As they did my youngest brother turned and screamed one last thing to me..."I HATE YOU!! YOU KILLED OUR DOG!"
Well Daisy, I hate you and you killed yourself. Luckily for me animals don't have souls.