Unaccompanied Minors by Jeff Kinney

Author:Jeff Kinney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

I admit I tormented my younger brother growing up, but if you ask me, I did him a favor. As an adult, Patrick is the least jumpy person I know, and I take full credit for that.

When we were kids, I would scare my brother every chance I got. Any time there was an opportunity to jump out of a closet, or hide behind the shower curtain, or emerge suddenly from the furnace room, I was there.

One time when Patrick was very young, I spent about an hour in the basement hiding behind a half wall as he played merrily with his Star Wars characters on the other side. I was a very patient hider, all the better to surprise my prey.

I found some masking tape and rolled it in a perfect, slow arc around the half wall to where Patrick was playing with his action figures. The roll of tape came to a rest right in front of him.

There was a long period of silence as Patrick tried to make sense of how a roll of masking tape might have moved across the floor all on its own. I think he came to the conclusion that a ghost was responsible.

“MOMMMMMMMMM!” Patrick yelled.

“RAHHHRRRRR!” I screamed, leaping up from my hiding place. Patrick just about jumped out of his skin.

But this was a rare victory for me. Over the years, Patrick became more and more immune to my scare tactics. Even my best-executed screams and sudden appearances seemed to elicit less and less of a reaction over time. Finally, when Patrick was a teenager, it became impossible for me to get any kind of response at all.

We had a deck on the back of the house, and my parents installed a hot tub. Before they filled it with water, I asked my father to help me to pull a prank on Patrick. It was a cold winter night, and I climbed into the empty hot tub and had my father put the heavy cover over me. Then my father went inside the house and asked Patrick to help lift the cover off of the hot tub.

From where I was hiding, I could hear the muffled sounds of my father and brother approaching. As soon as they lifted the cover off of the hot tub, I sprang out and screamed like a cat whose tail had been run over by a truck.

I was sure that this prank would be enough to scare anyone half to death. Even my father, who was in on the trick, was startled. But I got no response out of Patrick at all. Nothing. He might as well have been doing his taxes. That’s when I realized that trying to scare him was hopeless. I haven’t even tried in all the years since.

A few minutes after I pulled the hot tub trick, Patrick’s friend, a big football player named Mike, came to our house. I quickly got my father and my brother to put the cover back over me to see if we could scare Mike.

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