She Looked Real…

During my years as an official court reporter, I have seen and heard a lot of oddities.  One such oddity occurred as I was driving to Elizabethtown for work.   It was many years ago, but I can still remember it as though it happened yesterday.

driving down the highway

It was a sunny, summer day, and I was, believe it or not, running a tad late for work, so there was no dilly-dallying around to get on down the road.  Since I was totally focused on driving, it took me just a bit to realize the gal sitting in the car directly in front of me had not moved one inch.

When I finally started noticing my surroundings, what was going on in the car I had been following down Route 1, I began to notice that she was sitting up higher than the driver as though she were sitting on the console.  She was practically in the driver’s lap, she was sitting so closely.  And she was ramrod straight.  WOW!  What great posture that gal had.

This stiff-as-a-mannequin pose really caught my attention, and I began in earnest to see if she would at least move her head to look at the scenery.  But, no.  She didn’t even move with the pull of a curve.

Now, that’s odd.  I had never seen anyone sit that stiff and straight on the console of a car in my life.  She looked like a mannequin!

the mannequin girlfriend

But what in God’s green earth would somebody be doing with a mannequin sitting right beside them?  Maybe she was dead!  Oh, the thoughts that were swirling in my head!

I followed the driver and it all the way to the Karbers Ridge Road where the vehicle turned.  It was all I could do to say heck with work and follow the car.  Was the driver going to bury this thing sitting there?  Was it truly a mannequin as it appeared to be, this ramrod stiff, never-moved-a-muscle, gal-looking thing?

I will never know.  My sense of get-to-work-or-get-fired duty won out, and I kept going straight… with my neck craned backwards to see all I could see till they got out of sight.

Scaring Darla… Again

It’s just sooo easy!  She’s such a scaredy cat!  Saturday we went by Keely’s to pick up the grandgirls.  On the porch was a rubber snake… which scared her!  Jack went to pick it up, and Dar starts begging, “Please don’t throw it on me.”  He was only going to move it away from her, but she had already jumped up off the swing and hurried out to the yard.  Poor girl.  It took all my willpower to keep from throwing it on her!  But I didn’t.

angel of a sister

I am such a good sister.

The time at the mall, though, I did have to laugh so hard my belly hurt.  Dar and I and some other family members (can’t remember now who all went) were standing just inside a store in the mall by the front window displays.  We were all talking, and Dar starts calling my name in this weird voice.  I turn to look at her, and she is staring at the mannequins while she is trying to get our attention with her arm extended to touch us.  She couldn’t touch us because she was mesmerized with fear and couldn’t look away from the mannequins long enough to see where we were.  Just flapping her hand behind her in our general direction.

She said, “That mannequin moved its hand.”  Say what?  We all stood there and looked at the  mannequins on display.

mannequins

None of them were moving anything.  So Dar keeps on trying to convince us as she is staring fearfully at the display.  “That mannequin moved its hand!”  Uh-huh, we believe that.

About that time the mannequin lifted it’s hand off the shoulder of the one beside it and did a little wave, then put it’s hand back down.  I think, maybe, we all could have screamed.  I can’t recall right now.  But I do remember the group of four or so college-age kids standing outside the window dying laughing.  And, finally, the “mannequin” couldn’t stand it any longer either.  He also started laughing.

It was great!  Dar gave them a great time that day, and they gave us one.  We have laughed about that ever since, and that was years ago.