Sleep overs - haunted house style

The old farmhouse was never much to look at.  The yellowish faded exterior walls looked like stucco way before stucco was invented, so I’m told it was some kind of adobe.  The house wasn’t level and it tilted to one side.  Dad said it reminded him of The Fall of the House of Usher and that the house would some day break into pieces and slip into the septic tank.  On the topic of creepiness, it’s true that we had things happen in this house that made us wonder if it were haunted, but that will be in a later blog.  On mornings that pancakes or waffles were served, you had to turn your plate a just right to keep the syrup from running into your eggs.  It was always homemade syrup, so it was runnier than store-bought syrup. When you’re a kid, it’s important to keep the food from touching all the other food on your plate.  Struggling with vegetable juice was the worst!  When you get older you seem to grow out of it and you’re not as picky. When I spent the night at one of my friend’s house and they had pancakes the next morning, it was my first experience with cold syrup in a store bought bottle. My mother’s homemade syrup was always piping hot.  I remember asking their mom to warm it up and getting some strange looks.  I enjoyed pointing out this rotating plate feature to my friends when I was lucky enough to have someone come out to our scary house and spend the night.  (it’s tough to get 8 and 9 year old boys to come over for a sleepover when they’ve heard your house is haunted).  When I had Tim and Collin come over, we all slept upstairs in a double bed.  Both of them insisted on having a flashlight and all they could talk about was which monster was the scariest between Frankenstein, the Wolfman, or the Mummy.  Its funny, but I had no idea why they were so scared of my house.  I was used to all the weird things happening. Anyway, I remember choosing Frankenstein as the scariest monster.  You take a guy pieced together with different dead body parts with bolts sticking out of his neck who liked to throw little girls in the lake and he’ll win my vote every time.  

And what the heck was wrong with that little girl in the Frankenstein movie anyway?  It’s obvious he was a freakin’ monster with an Abby Normal brain and she’s talking to him like he’s Uncle Jim at a family reunion.  The anticipation of her suddenly realizing he was a monster and screaming her head off made me run and hide behind the couch.  There was something about the back of the couch that made the scary stuff on TV easier to deal with.