Denny and I Trick Our Dad

"Don't Try this at Home!"

Dad sat at the dinette table, staring into his coffee in silence. Every day, after 9 hours at the Fisher Body factory, he sat there in perfect quietude, looking over the Plain Dealer.

Denny and I had a bright idea that summer afternoon in 1958. Let's make a dummy out of Denny's pants, shoes, and shirt, and hang it so that the feet are at Dad's eye level, just within his peripheral vision, as he sits there with his coffee and paper. "Let's see what he does," Denny said.

So we got to work, attaching sneakers to the pants' bottoms, stuffing the legs with paper, stuffing a shirt, then dangling this brilliant invention just within Dad's field of vision.

We were jigging this dummy up and down when suddenly we heard feet pounding on the stairs. In a flash Dad was standing behind us as we continued jigging the dummy. His face was red, eyes wide open. He was wheezing badly.

"What the hell are you doing?" he yelled.

We were speechless, dumbstruck. Finally I blurted out, "We were making a joke on you, Dad."

Dad unbuckled his belt, pulled it off . . . and taught us a painful lesson about scaring your Dad half to death.#