Proud Larry's is famous for its pizza, but Penny didn't want pizza (of course), so we instead ordered calzones (which, you know, is completely unlike pizza) for all. I was hungry, so I almost finished half of mine before I grew so stuffed that I think I began hallucinating, 'cause the molecular structure of Mose Allison (whose concert poster was hanging on the wall) became suddenly apparent to me. Ooo-eee. We drove back to the Congo, dropped off the remaining calzone to-go boxes in the fridge, took a quick drive out to Sardis Lake,
and in about half an hour we all four got out to play. It was a beautiful day, a touch too humid for my liking, but Penny had packed our cooler with water and juice and diet snack crackers, so we were all good to go. We pulled the big green ball out of the hatch, and Nicholas and I played kick and catch for about five minutes. Georgia then decided she wanted to play, too, but that didn't last long; she asked Baboo to throw it to her, and he did...as if she were someone his size. She tried to catch the ball, but, in fact, the ball caught her. Not good. Time to put the ball away. Nicholas was bummed. Penny tried to cheer him up,
but it didnt' work. He moped around and around, his head down, not looking where he was going, and then WHAM! He ran into a large metal pole*. It was the playground! We all ran over to play on the elaborate set. Nicholas had fun there on his own, but I had to help Georgia walk up the ramp, crawl through the tunnel, and walk down the slide about fifty times, repeating the same pattern, never deviating. Penny helped by keeping our morale up, sitting on the bench, eating her diet snack crackers, and cheering whenever it seemed like we (meaning I) needed an uplift.
Thirty minutes later, Georgia started getting fussy, and she needed a diaper change. Penny took her to the bathroom, and Nicholas tagged along. He came back quickly, though, and asked me if could play kick and catch till they returned. I obliged. We kicked the ball back and forth for a few minutes, then we decided to start being creative with our kicks. Nicholas displayed his Karate Kid Crane Kick, which you can see below.
Before that, I showed Nicholas my jump-up-in-the-air-then-do-a-split-then-land-kicking-the-ball trick, which I termed my So-You-Think-You-Can-Dance-Winner-Josuhar-Pookie-Allen Kick. Unfortunately, Penny hadn't yet returned from the restroom in time to snap a picture of it.
We soon grew hot and tired, and we left the Lake. On the way back, Penny and I talked about needing to go back home tomorrow, and Nicholas sighed. We told him that he knew that we'd eventually have to return to our house, and hadn't we had fun yet? He said he had. Why the sigh, then? Nicholas told us that all Dad talked about on the way up was going ghost hunting, and that we hadn't seen any yet. Yeah, kid, that's what you think.
Penny reminded me that I was thinking out loud again. Oops. "Well," she told Nicholas, "I believe there's still one haunted place we haven't been, right Dad?" I nodded.
"What's that?" Nicholas asked.
"It's a haunted fraternity," I told him.
"What's a fraternity?" he asked.
Penny interjected, "Nicholas, a fraternity is a group of boys who live together in the same house in college because they don't know how to live with girls and are too childish to live on their own."
Nicholas then asked why this fraternity we were going to see was haunted. I told him the haunted fraternity house were going to see, Delta Psi's St. Anthony Hall, has been haunted for quite a number of years by....
"Let me tell this one," Penny said. "Nicholas, it all began nineteen years ago, in the fall of 1989. In the fraternity house lived a big-headed young man...."
"Did he really have a big head," Nicholas asked, "or did he just think he was great?"
"Both," Penny said. "This young man-everyone called him BM."
"Mom," Nicholas said, "that's ugly. That's what the doctor calls it when you have to go to the bathroom. BM stands for poo-poo."
"It sure does," Penny said. "Anyway, BM lived in St. Anthony's Hall with all his friends. At night, they liked to get together to talk about all the sorority girls they wanted to date, whether they were pretty or nice or smart or not. Well, what BM's fraternity friends didn't know was that BM had been doing the unthinkable: he was dating a girl...who was not in a sorority! Of course, he was dating her before he ever joined the fraternity, but he didn't tell his friends that. That's important, because in a fraternity, you have to date a sorority girl, or your friends won't think you're cool anymore--and BM wanted his friends to think he was cool ('cause he really wasn't).
Nicholas giggled, and then he asked "Then why'd the girl who wasn't in a sorority ever go out with him then?"
I added, "Yes, I'd like to know that one myself."
"Oh...who knows," Penny said. "It's just a story. Anyway, one night BM and his girlfriend were attending a party on campus. Some of BM's buddies came by, and BM started talking to them, never introducing his girlfriend. A few minutes later, a girl walked by, and one of BM's friends asked her if she was in a sorority. She said she was. They then told BM that he should go talk to her and maybe ask her out on a date. He said to them, "That's a great idea. Don't mind if I do." BM's girlfriend was shocked--how could he say such a thing in front of her? BM then turned to his girlfriend and said to her, "Honey, I'm sure you understand. She's in a sorority, and--well--you're not. Don't worry, though. If she doesn't like me, I'll come right back. Don't go anywhere, now!"
"What'd the girlfriend do?" Nicholas asked.
"She stayed right there, didn't she?" I responded.
"No! She did not!" Penny said. "As soon as BM left, the girlfriend rushed to the kitchen, grabbed a steak knife, and went upstairs to BM's room. She waited for hours, and then finally, she heard a high-pitched giggle: it was BM. She heard a girl with him, too. She waited behind the door, and when it opened, the girlfriend rushed over and chopped BM's head off! Yeah!"
"With a steak knife?" I asked her.
"It was sharp," Penny said, "but I'm not done. As soon as his big head fell on the floor, it was so heavy, that it crashed down to the floor below, leaving a huge hole in its place. The girlfriend wasn't done, and she pushed the sorority girl down the hole, too. Then, the girlfriend ran downstairs, out the door, and was never heard from again."
"You sure about that?" I asked her.
"I'm just repeating the story as it was told to me," Penny said. "And to this day, Nicholas, the boys who live in that fraternity still say that on some nights--and some afternoons, too--they see a huge head, floating around the house, looking for it's body."
Nicholas didn't move. He was frightened. Why? For there was the haunted fraternity!
Okay, so it doesn't look so frightening in that picture, so how about this?
Ah-hah! That's more like it. We asked Nicholas if we wanted to go inside and tour the house, but he politely declined. 'Bout this time, Georgia woke from her nap, and she told us she wanted to go to her favorite place: Wal-Mart.So, we went to Wal-Mart. Shopped. Took a picture of a bird in the parking lot.
After eating left-over calzones for supper, we wound down by watching Ratatouille. As soon as Georgia fell asleep, Nicholas asked if I ever saw a ghost in that fraternity. I told him no. He asked if it were possible for the ghost of that fraternity to follow us back to the Congo. Penny and I both told him no. Why was he asking? "Because," he said, "there's one here in the Congo right now!"
Tomorrow: Hotty Toddy, Part IX: The Finarle.
*Note - Later, Nicholas told me that he didn't bump into the pole by accident. He told me he was imitating his mom, who once ran accidentally ran into a goalpost while running laps around the track next to her high-school football field.
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