Not Just an April Fool

Right around the time when I had reached the peak of my pain in the butt preteen years, the time when everyone around me was an idiot and I was the only voice of reason in the entire world, my family watched my four-year-old cousin Kate for the weekend.  Two of my other cousins, Bizzy and Tommy, were staying with us also, so I dramatically moaned about effectively being the oldest of six and about how no one understood me and how Stacy from "The Babysitter's Club" had it so easy because she was an only child.  You get the idea.  I was not a pleasant young lady.

My mom, probably in a fit of exhaustion from dealing with all of us, allowed me to take the kids on the bus to the mall to see a movie.  They started annoying me almost immediately.  Most annoying, in my opinion, was little Kate, who was ten years younger than me and who it seemed to me did an awful lot of whining.  She was as cute as a button with her curls and her little red glasses, but after three days I decided I had been as tolerant as I could.  It was time for me to take revenge on a four-year-old.

You see, I had discovered that Kate had a deathly fear of mannequins.   She revealed this weakness by screaming and running out of Sears when we came upon three mannequins displaying the latest in early 90's styles.  I filed that away and on the bus ride home I put my plan into action.

"Hey Kate," I said, "Did you hear that Mannequinitis has been going around?"  Kate shook her head, her little eyes growing big behind her adorable glasses.  "Yeah, it's pretty serious.  People get it and without any warning at all, they suddenly turn into mann..." With that, I froze, a creepily wooden smile plastered on my face and my eyes looking off in the distance.

My cousin Tommy played right along.  "Oh no!  It looks like Taryn has caught Mannequinitis!  There's nothing we can do for her..." He stared a cold dead stare at Kate, looking like the perfect boy mannequin.

She screeched and almost got us kicked off the bus.  She cried for ten minutes, terrified that she'd turn into a mannequin at any minute, and I did feel a twinge of guilt.  My sympathy deflated quickly when we arrived back at my house and she sung like a canary, telling my harried mother every detail of my meanness.  My mom was furious and insisted that I sleep with Kate in my room that night, convinced she'd have bad dreams and never sleep.

Kate was adamant that we sleep in my sister Annie's room, although she demanded that I take the framed picture of Tom Selleck down from the wall.  No, I'm not kidding- my sister had a framed black and white picture of Tom Selleck.  I can't even pretend that that's normal but let's move on.  Kate demanded story after story and song after song, and my adolescent rage was just boiling by the time she finally fell asleep.  I set phase two of my plan into motion.

A few weeks before, my friend Anne and I had bought one of those make-up practicing doll heads at a thrift shop near my house.  We had named her Ezra and had dyed her hair green and painted shamrocks on her face, intending to throw her at passing floats at the St. Patrick's Day parade, but my boring mom had stopped us in our tracks. Ezra had been gathering dust in the back of my closet since then, but finally that night she would be put to good use.

Kate woke up twenty minutes later after hearing noises in the hall.  The nightlight was on and she turned over to find me asleep in the bed next to her.  She shook my shoulder, saying, "Taryn, I have to go to the bathroom.  Taryn?  Taryn?"  When she looked closer, she saw that instead of my familiar face, she was lying next to a mannequin.  Mannequinitis had struck in the middle of the night!  She screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed, waking my parents and probably some of our neighbors too.

Ezra was confiscated and I never saw her again.  I was grounded forever. Luckily, Kate has forgiven me.  She is now just a few months away from becoming a nurse.  I seriously delight in reading her Facebook status updates every day because she loves her job just that much.  She's one of my favorite cousins and she has a great sense of humor.  I am not sure how she feels about mannequins.  I really hope she can go to the mall without grabbing her heart, screaming in terror and fleeing at the sight of their creepy plastic smiles, but if she can't, at least she can blame it on her abusive cousin Taryn.  I look forward to paying for her therapy bills.