Tao of Cao

Gulliver’s Travel – A Story of Entrapment.

I have to thank the folks at The Anecdotalist Podcast for resparking some of my favorite stories as a kid. I have so many stories that I want to share and I’m going to start sharing them here on my blog. I’ve submitted one to their podcast and I’ll wait for that one to air before I share it. Aside from that I’ll share the ones that I have on my list that I’m so excited to share. Today will be a story of entrapment…not the type that cops do when they are trying to catch you doing something but one of actually trapping something. I call this one “Gulliver’s Travel”.

Growing up as a kid, I was raised by my grandparents. My parents divorced when I was 4 or 5 years old. On the weekends I would alternate from going to my Mom’s or my Dad’s. I loved going to my mom’s because a lot of times we did fun stuff that I liked. Some of those things were, playing card games, rent video game consoles to play for the weekend, go to the mall, and go out to eat! One of the other things that we did was play practical jokes on one another.  One of the things about my mom, she has been clean of alcohol about 26 years. Mom was never drop dead drunk where she couldn’t function but she was a functional alcoholic, it was something that was natural to be round and she wasn’t a horrible person. She’s was and still is an amazing mom and I love her. At the time of this story I’m going to tell was during the period when she may have had some alcohol. (*wink*) I have also have an older sister that I would spend the weekend with when I was at my mom’s house. She was raised by my grandparents on my mom’s side of the family so we got to see each other and spend lots of time with one another when I was there. With that let the story begin.

It was a Saturday afternoon in the fall and myself, Renee (my sister, yes she has the same name as my wife) and my mom had gotten back from our Saturday routine of going to the mall, getting food and going by the video store. My mom lived in a trailer that in had a queen bed in the main room and also a twin bed that had the headboard/footboard combo. One of the effects of alcohol on my mom was that she would take naps frequently and she would fall asleep easily. So this Saturday afternoon my mom had fell asleep and my sister and I had a plan for her…an EVIL plan! My sister and I had schemed and gotten some old cassette tapes and taken them apart and was using the material on the inside as twine. We twirled it together to the point where it was pretty tough and almost unbreakable.

This day while mom was sleeping we had taken our stash of twine and began to wrap it slowly around the bedpost that she was napping on and around her wrist and ankles. She would twitch every now and then and we would stop so that she would settle back down and we were fighting our laughter as we tied her wrist to the bed post and ankles to the footboard. After doing that we then tied a make shift “trip wire” from the chair to the bottom of the bed so if she broke free she would trip. (Hey we were kids we didn’t know the dangers!!!!) After setting up our joke/trap we waited and waited for her to wake up. We waited so long we couldn’t wait any longer so we began to do stuff to wake her up like using feathers to ticker her nose and face and when she attempted to swat at the “fly” she couldn’t move! When she woke up and noticed that she was immobilized she began to yell our names, “Jonathan!!!! Renee!!!! What are you doing!?!?!”. We laughed and laughed until we realized that she wasn’t getting our practical joke. We couldn’t help to keep laughing and we were looking at each other as who was going to go untie mom? Mom was able to free herself and during the whole “excitement” of her waking up we forgot about the trip wire!!!

This is a good memory that we still talk about to this day! Our mom was such a good sport and she is loved so much. This is always a story that makes me smile. Hope you enjoyed the story and I’ll share more at a later date!

August 26, 2011 Posted by J | Humor, Reflections | childhood stories, gulliver's travel, mom, tape | Leave a Comment