EEEEVILLLL

It has occurred to me that I might owe my niece-in-law a bit of a warning. It’s possible that her husband might pass on some of the teasing he endured as a child. If he does, and the child turns out kinda warped, well, it’s probably largely my fault. I am, after all, EVIL. Last spring, I was at Scarborough, before cannon, talking and giggling with one of my friends. One of the cast members came over and made a crack about my laugh being evil. S & I looked at him, and I said “who, me?” I, of course, gave him my best “why, I can’t imagine why you would think such a thing” look, which was promptly lost when I laughed my usual laugh, which does sort of come out as a cackle. His face lit up and he said “Yes, that’s the one!” We talked with him for a few more minutes before he wandered off to see who else he might find. That, however, was NOT the end of our encounter that morning. Every few minutes, he would come back and talk some more. The last time he came over, he said to me “That’s it, I am ALWAYS drawn to the most evil in any location, and I keep being drawn over here, therefore, YOU are the Center of All Evil.” I accepted the title with more than a little glee! I’m pretty sure that my nephew would tell you that my evilness goes back at least 15 years. Now, I have always been the one who would tell him just about anything, mostly because he would believe it. God bless him, it took him awhile to not be quite so naïve. Eventually, he figured out that my sister, his mother, generally didn’t give me up, but that his grandmother, my mom, usually would. Something about her telling him at one point “I will never lie to you”. For what I think was his 12th birthday, I got him a gift card to somewhere, I don’t remember the shop, but it was a shop I knew he liked. I took that gift card and put it in the bottom of a box, probably 6x6x6. I filled the box with rocks from the yard. I am not talking about pebbles or pea gravel, I’m talking about random rocks. I should insert here that Mom knew that there was a gift card in there somewhere, but all she saw me doing was filling the box with rocks. Once it was full enough to not let the card get exposed too early, but still empty enough to rattle loudly when shaken, I closed it and wrapped it. We got to my sister’s house, and time came to open packages. The box got picked up and shaken. Nephew: What is it? Me: A box of rocks. Nephew: Nuh uh Me: Yep Nephew (to his mother): Really, Mom, what is it? My sister: She told me it was a box of rocks Nephew (to my mom): Melissa, what is in it? Mom: All I saw her put in it was a bunch of rocks. He’s beginning to look a bit concerned, simply because he knows that while Aunt R and his mom might try to pull one over on him, he’s POSITIVE that his grandmother would never do so, thus the box MUST contain rocks. AND there were NO MORE PACKAGES that could possibly contain a real gift from Aunt R. He still had this utterly incredulous look on his face when he opened the box and there were indeed rocks in it. As he started pulling rocks out, Mom piped up and told him that I’d stolen them from her yard, and she wanted them back. He eventually got to the bottom of the box and found the gift card, which of course lit his face up. I’m still not sure if it was joy or relief. He did put all the rocks back in the box and hand them over to Mom and they were returned to the yard. Yeah, I’ve been evil for a long time! Yeah, I probably should give my niece-in-law some sort of warning. Or not.