I come by it honestly.

We inherit many traits from our parents, both physical and psychological. Genetics will not be denied; but then there are the things we are conditioned to be, and to do.

I have no idea if my father was in to practical jokes before my sister and I came along, but somewhere along the line it began. My mother did not join in, which made her that much more fun to target. Her fear of rodents and our relentless pursuit of this over 40 years is worth its own post.  We’ve always enjoyed a good pranking, be it something as simple as hiding under your sister’s bed until she is almost asleep then reaching up and grabbing her while screaming (I needed a new mattress anyway), to more elaborate jokes involving complicated engineering (hats off to Dad!).

It was all clean, honest pranking fun, and probably would have stayed that way were it not for the special behavioral conditioning.

It must have started young, because I don’t recall a time when I wasn’t making mental notes of people’s weak spots. That  soft, delicious, tender underbelly that leaves people weak. That marvelous achilles heel just ripe for slicing.  We could suppose that hanging around with my sister, whose manipulation of my psyche is the stuff of legend, taught me at a young age everyone has a wobbly brick or two, and it never hurts to give them a little kick…see what falls loose. That collection of notes on the small weaknesses, fears, or sore spots is handy for pranks, but not always. For example, the leverage gained from learning about a childhood issue that left someone scarred may be  best used at a moment when they’ve gotten a bit big for their britches. One quick jab to the bubble and you can enjoy the sad, whistling sound of deflation.

Now don’t go rushing to feel so sorry for all my friends and acquaintances, hapless victims of my cruelty. Any childhood time I had free from indexing weak spots in others was spent trying to protect mine, mostly from my sister. You want to see a pro in action, join us for a family birthday. In fact, you get enough of us around a table at one time and it paralyzes unwitting newcomers, like a fawn in the  beam of a poacher’s light. They don’t even try to run. They just sit there, next to their plate of birthday cake, ice cream melting into a sweet puddle around it, trying to figure out how such jolly people can be so deeply harsh at the same time. “Look at them, they are weeping with laughter…” My sister and I can really twist the knife in each other, all in the name of a (great) laugh, but don’t walk into the room while we’re doing it. We turn into a tag team who have perfected the slingshot catapult/clothesline combo, and you won’t even realize that you stepped into the ring.

And so it was that the two pastimes, pranking and putting the psychological screws to each other, naturally converged. My fear of the dark? Excellent fodder for a little game called “SAND PEOPLE!” where my sister flips off the light as I am coming up the basement stairs, plunging me into darkness and icy fear, which she followed swiftly by leaping out at the bottom of the stairs, shrieking “SAND PEOPLE!!!” with arms thrust in the air (like the Sand People do) and storming up the stairs behind me, grabbing at my feet.

Top Tip: Take care not to slip in the puddle of wee I left as I crazily ran into the wall four times trying to get away AWAY AWAY!

Welcome to my nightmares.

My sister excelled at the stealth maneuvers, and had patience that I could never match. Plus, I would get giddy in anticipation of the fright I was going to deliver and my advance snickering would  give me away. Those who know my sister  know that if you walk into a space where she should be, and there is no sight or sound of her, freeze. Slowly go back the way you came. She’s there, you just can’t see her. And if you stay, it will just get worse.

My father favours old school pranks, but he did occasionally wander into the psychological territory, even if he didn’t realize it. A lifelong hunter, he used to bow hunt and even taught bow hunter safety courses. For those classes they had a 6 foot tall mannequin, dressed in full gear - camouflage, bow, arrows, knife and more. It was the late eighties. I had just been to see a fairly disturbing war movie, and returned home late. Everyone was asleep and the house was dark. I walked down the hallway to my bedroom, in the dark. I’d have preferred the lights on; I didn’t like the dark and that movie had made me jittery, but as everyone else was sleeping, I went quietly though the blackness. Opening my bedroom door, I flipped on the light and was greeted by this:

Oh hey Pyle, thanks for decorating my bedroom to look like a latrine. What's that you have ? Full metal what now?

The look in his eyes. The sure feeling that my family had all been killed by this maniac and I was next.  This was it. The end.

That was all in the split second after the light came on. In the split second following that, my majority of my brain caught up with the fear centre who, having just shit itself, was weeping and trying to find a way out through my nose.  Once everyone had calmed down, and my eyes and brain were working together, this was approximately the reality of what was standing in front of me.

My father thought it would be hilarious to leave his life sized, bow hunting Ken doll in my room to greet me when I got home late at night, on my own, after ingesting war scenes for a few hours. He likely thought it would be a good laugh, rather than something that scarred me for the rest of my adult life.

So there you have it. I’ve just offered you up a soft spot on a silver platter. What you choose to do with it is up to you. Just bear in mind my credo: “Any return volley should be a barrage.”

Don’t blame me. I come by it honestly.