I Soiled My Armour I Was So Scared

This morning I was reminded of the above immortal words from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It was early and I got up from sleep to use the bathroom. You know how it is, you don't actually open your eyes, you just feel your way around the room since you don't want to turn the lights on and have your head explode. One of the two doors to the bathroom happens to open directly into my bedroom. So I went to the door, wearing only a sleepy smile, and started to open it, while still caught up in my dream about hot girls in Hawaii.

As the door swung open, a deep sepulchral voice boomed, "Yo Ho!" from the general direction of the toilet.

After I climbed down from the top of my bookcase I hurled a few choice insults at the demonic voice on the can. He started to chuckle. I realized it was my dad and mumbled, "S'not funny." He started laughing. I told him to stop laughing, so of course he laughed even harder.

What kind of demented psychopath says, "Yo Ho!" to warn someone that the bathroom is in use? I thought I'd suddenly stumbled into the lair of the Dread Pirate Roberts and he was about to send me to Davey Jones' Locker.

Believe me, you really do not want to frighten someone with an overactive imagination, like yours truly.

Oddly, just the day before my mom was sitting at the computer working on her lit blog and she was so deep in concentration she didn't notice that I'd come around to the other side of the room and was standing behind her on the right. I started to say, "Hey Ma..." and she screamed like the computer had suddenly turned into a snake. She was actually quite upset but I couldn't stop laughing at her.

Karma. She's a mean-spirited bitch that one.

I don't know why it keeps happening but I seem to startle people a lot. I'm fairly large and heavy and my friends can attest to the fact that I generally make a lot more noise than I'm entitled to, so you'd think people would hear me coming. We've got a girl who comes in to take care of the laundry and dusting and such since mom's disabled. I've started singing as I walk down the stairs so that by the time I get to the laundry room she knows I'm coming. The first few weeks I would walk in and say, "Julie, where's the..." and she'd jump like a rabbit.

Now when I walk into the laundry room, even though I'm singing for her benefit, she laughs at me. The nerve.

I get a superpower and instead of something cool like X-ray Vision(tm) or Super-Strength(tm) I get "Sneaky Startle!"(tm)

Great. I'll wear blue tights and a silly mask and walk around calling myself "The Startler"(tm).

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Eat your vegetables or "The Startler"(tm) will get you!

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