Dec 042012
 

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 Chooch and I were kind of under the weather on Saturday, but by that afternoon, we were practically clawing our faces off in boredom. Henry, however, was “so busy” and not doing a good job of entertaining us AT ALL, so we decided to ditch him and go to the cemetery.

Really, Henry was begging us to leave because we were “getting in the way” of his “cleaning.”

(Seriously, the house did not look that clean when we came home. Hope you had fun watching albino porn, Henry you sexual deviant.)

Anyway, I brought my Jonny doll and Chooch brought his favorite stuffed animal — a fox puppet appropriately named Fox. We’re on the same level.

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We totally don’t need Henry!

(Until we get hungry.)

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I really believe that cemeteries helped Chooch learn to read. So there.

(That and Asian horror movies.)

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“What’s that green stuff? Chooch asked, toeing the ground. I almost peed my pants. It was moss! Eight years ago in that same cemetery, Henry and I had the most pointless discussion about moss, which culminated with him losing his patience and yelling, “Moss is bad! It can lead to problems! Leave it at that and end it!”

“Ask your dad,” I told Chooch, doubling over with laughter. I promptly texted my friend Alyson that Chooch had asked me about moss, and her response was “Moss is bad! Leave it at that!”

Henry, leaving lasting impressions across the Internet.

Of course, when I told him about this later, he looked all confused and said he didn’t remember what I was talking about. Nice to know he’s so cloudy when it comes to Erin & Henry: The Early Years.

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And then something terrible happened.

Chooch and I were strolling along when we came to a crest in the road. That was when I saw her: a random, older woman wandering around amongst the tombstones.

I clotheslined my arm, bringing Chooch to a halt.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, and I hissed for him to STFU.

“Look at that lady,” I whispered. “I don’t trust her. She might be a ghost.”

“She doesn’t look like a ghost,” was Chooch’s Normal Person response, and he kept walking toward her. She was probably fifty yards away (hahahaha like I even know what yards are).

I had heart palpitations like Lady Gaga must get every time she dry humps a haute couture crucifix. “We have to get back to to the main road,” I said urgently. We were too secluded where we were. Probably no one would hear us scream when the stranger decided to mug us for our stuffed toys.

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Please excuse my shitty diagram, but I am at work. This is the basic set up of the area of the cemetery we were hostages in, except that it’s kind of hilly, so you can’t actually see a lot of what’s ahead depending on where you are. For instance: Chooch and I didn’t know there was another person there until I yanked him to the right, onto another cemetery road that curves and drops down. Idling there was a man in a Blazer with Florida plates. The driver and I locked eyes in his rearview mirror and as he emitted a puff of smoke from his molestor-mouth, I had a Super Bad Feeling, also known as  Irrational Paranoia.

Just then, he put the Blazer in reverse and I dragged Chooch off the road and into the grass.

“What the hell?” Chooch yelled at me.

“OK, Chooch. Listen to me. We can either keep going straight until we reach the main road [where we could, what? Throw our bodies across the hood of a moving car so that they can drive us to safety?] or make a run for our car. Do you think we can make it to our car?”

I was afraid that the Blazer was going to loop around and beat us there AND THEN WE WOULD BE TRAPPED. But if we kept running toward the road, we could run through the grass, dodging all the graves which would make it impossible for him to run us down.

But then what if Chooch tripped or I dropped Jonny – would I be able to leave either of them behind?

(Yes, I thought a lot about this.)

Apparently I can leave my son behind because I decided we were going to make a run for the car and then started sprinting before Chooch had a chance to realize what was going on.

Don’t worry. He runs fast.

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Oh fuck, did we run like Haitians.

Unfortunately, the handle on the driver’s door of our car has been broken for months now, and can only be opened from the inside. So I’m screaming, “GET IN THE CAR AND OPEN THE DOOR FOR ME! OPEN THE DOOR FOR ME OH MY GOD HURRY!!!” to Chooch, who’s flopping all over the console in an attempt to climb to the front, leaving me standing out there jumping up and down, and pee-jigging. I kept looking over my shoulder, waiting for the Blazer to appear, engine and libido revving,which would be one of the last sounds I heard before being vehicularly mudered.

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Good news! We survived.

Not ready to go home yet, we went to another cemetery across the street. This one felt safer.

On the way home, I asked Chooch what his favorite part of the day was and he said, “When you got all weird about that lady.”

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When we got home, I told Chooch to tell Henry about the harrowing events. He rolled his eyes and started out with, “There was this lady there that Mommy was afraid of for no reason—”

“I thought she could have been a ghost!” I interjected hysterically.

When Chooch got to the part about me making him run back to the car, Henry got all worked up and said, “Would you stop doing shit like that to him!?”

I can’t help it! I’m a very paranoid person, which I think stems from my mom. I still have vivid memories of her making me hide in the attic with her because some PTA lady was knocking on our door with a stack of papers she needed my mom to type.

There are times I scream, “PIZZA GUY!” and trip over myself as I run to the steps to hide. It’s an involuntary tick. I did this one time when Tommy and Jessy were here and Tommy mocked me for months. One time we were out at the flea market and out of the blue, he screamed, “PIZZA GUY!!” and started to run away.

(OK. Now that I just typed all that out, I guess I can see Henry’s point.)

After Chooch told the whole story, Henry sighed and said, “Did it ever occur to you that she was just looking for someone’s grave?”

Yeah, a grave to dig up and stash our remains in!

  2 Responses to “Cemetery Fight or Flight (Apparently, Flight.)”

  1. I’m a firm believer in listening to your instincts. That Florida Blazer Molester was totally going to rape you, then chop your body up in little pieces and feed it to his pigs. I just know it.

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