For the first time this week, she was alone in the house. After dinner, Dad Clay had taken little Jack and his sister Beverly out to karate class or soccer practice or something - she couldn’t remember - and with the close of a single door the din of a young family vaporized like a magic trick. Poof - it was silent. She could hear the clock above the sink ticking. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been able to hear that clock tick. Had it been weeks? Months?

She sat at the kitchen table just to absorb the soft rhythm, letting each iteration of the second hand chip away at her stress like a masseuse gently thumping on clenched muscles. After a few minutes the ticking of the clock reminded her that her supply of quiet was limited, and she’d better get busy with the cleaning she wanted to accomplish before her Progenitors Of Dirt returned home.

She was in the kitchen, and that was as good a place as any to start her cleaning. As she filled a bucket with hot water and soap, the phone wrang. It was her mother, just calling to chat. How lucky she felt to have an extra long cord on the kitchen phone; she could clean and chat simultaneously! With the phone nestled between her cocked head and her shoulder, she began kneading a soapy washcloth into the kitchen table, scouring out the ground Cheerios and cottage cheese stuck in the table’s delicately etched details. Twittering away with her mom about nothing in particular, she glanced at the new couch in the living room. Eggshell with a floral print. It made her happy just to gaze upon it. But her pleasant state turned to horror almost immediately.

“Oh my God, Mom. I’ve gotta go.” She dropped the phone to the floor and raced to the kitchen sink, where in a single motion she spun six or seven sheets from the roll of paper towels hanging under the cabinet, turned on her heels and raced back to her beautiful couch.

“That damn dog!” she cursed. For a fugacious moment she wondered how that puppy could have even jumped onto the couch, but the screaming flood of rage and mushrooming sense of loss quickly forced that thought out of her head. She had damage control to do, and every second she waited would only make things worse. She ripped the length of paper towels in half and knelt at the couch, a wad in each hand, cupping them together as she tried to gently scoop the soft, oozy dog crap from her beautiful new (expensive!) couch.

As the paper towels raised the poop from the cushion she noticed that despite it’s soft appearance it was holding together nicely. Maybe the couch wouldn’t be ruined after all. Come to think of it, the poop was really light, too. Like it was hollow in the middle. Almost like

Rubber.

She stuck her finger right into the middle of the brown pile, and the message her finger’s tactile sensors sent to her brain nearly made her head explode. This was not the act of a dog. It was a prank of a soon-to-be-deceased little boy! She threw the hollow rubber replica to the floor and started plotting a homicide.

Edit: I forgot to add - even now, almost 30 years later, I giggle when I think about this prank.* Mom was furious about it, and if it hadn’t been so damn funny, I’d probably be dead.

*It should be noted that I also own Beavis and Butt-Head DVDs.