DO LOOK BEHIND THAT CURTAIN

Her shower stunt dripped with irony.

Back in 1965, when I was 13, I came home from a baby-sitting job to an empty house. My parents and brother were at church, and my sister was at work. I went into the bathroom and peeled off my clothes to take a shower. Just then, I heard my sister come home. I decided this was the perfect opportunity to scare her, so I hid behind the shower curtain to lunge out when she passed by. But instead of coming in, she dropped everything and ran out the door. Sheesh! What’s wrong with her? I wondered. I shrugged it off and took my shower.

Unfortunately, I was in for a nasty shock of my own. Without realizing it, I had frightened my sister: She’d heard the shower curtain rustling, seen my clothes and thought the worst. She jumped back into her car, sped to church and burst into the service shouting, “There’s someone in the house, and I saw Janet’s clothes on the floor!” My family bolted from the church, believing that something terrible had happened to me. Dad was speeding, so a cop pulled him over. After Dad told him the situation, the police officer followed him home.

My entire family and the policeman were running in to see if I was OK.

The next thing I knew, my entire family and the policeman were running in to see if I was OK. I was forced to explain to everyone that there had been no intruder,

I’d just been hiding in the shower to scare my sister. Talk about embarrassing. To make matters worse, everyone from church dropped by later that evening, one by painful one, to make sure I was all right.

That was the first—and last—time I ever tried to pull a prank on my sister.