The Monster in Our Minds

My little sister Alicia and I were inseparable growing up. At any given moment, we were either fighting violently or playing Barbies for hours (and I mean HOURS) in our room. We weren't allowed to have any boy Barbies, so we cut the hair off of some of our girl Barbies in order to turn them into makeshift boys. We were very imaginative. :)

If we weren't playing Barbies, you could typically find us outdoors, running like crazies in the yard, jumping on the trampoline, or frolicking on the mountainside where we lived. Yes, I just used the word frolicking. Deal with it. :) The world was our playground, and we took full advantage of the fact that we were fairly isolated in such a gigantic and mysterious wonderland. However, when the sun went down and the last of the evening light faded, we were more wary than usual due to the fact that mountain lions, coyotes, and other terrifying creatures lurked in the shadows of the same mountainside that we lived on.

One evening Alicia and I were outside after the sun had gone down, and we wisely decided that it was time to go inside for the night. We began making our way up a small walkway covered in rocks and pebbles that wrapped around the side of our house when we both suddenly stopped dead in our tracks. Shhh! What was that?? There was an unmistakable sound of a footstep behind us. We stared at each other in breathless silence, wondering if we had imagined it. After a moment, we heard it again, only this time it was two footsteps, and they were coming towards us!

I don't know which one of us panicked first. We may have both panicked at the same time, because in an instant we were screaming and running down the walkway towards our house like two terrified bats out of hell (it's not a swearword when used in that context, right? ;). Due to our intensely freaked out state of mind, all of our attention was on the monster that was following us rather than where we were going.

Suddenly, we were both flying unexpectedly and haphazardly through the air. We had simultaneously tripped over the beastly lawn mower that was left out on the walkway. Before we knew it, we had landed in a tangled heap of screaming, shivering terror. Scrambling like ants from a hot fire, we managed to get to our feet as dad came tearing out of the house to investigate the commotion. We blurted out that someone or something was chasing us, while tears of fear and pain clouded our eyes. Dad quickly went to investigate while we ran into the house.

Moments later, he came inside, chuckling with amusement. To our utter relief and simultaneous mortification, we found out that the bajeebies had been scared out of us by... wait for it....

a frog.


Definitely not the proudest moment for either of us.