If you know me, you know I like to scare people and play pranks. So it wouldn’t be a shock that one of my favorite jobs I’ve had was being a “monster” at a haunted house. The pay was only $20 a night, it was 5 minutes down the road from our house and they fed us pizza. Quite the gig if you ask me. The other benefit was two of my sisters and two of my friends worked there too, so between scares we would run into each other’s rooms just to dance and goof off. Also I was always this old man mask so, with my height (5ft exactly) and my fabulous dance moves; I was quite the sight to see.
Yes, it was an amazing job, but it did have its downfalls. One of them being the late hours… Lucky for me the room I “scared in” had a mantle piece that I would lay across and sleep on. I don’t know how I managed to not fall off of that 12 in mantle piece and was never discovered sleeping, but let that tell you, I obviously had some amazing skills. The other (more humorous) downfall of being a “monster” was the fact that people always called my sister, Angie, and I, midgets. Sure sure in most peoples’ minds if you’re 5ft tall or you have to look down at the person then that = midget (when in actuality the midget cutoff is 4.11 in). So I can understand the difficulty in distinguishing the few inches of the midget cutoff, especially when we were in masks, which could have as likely made us 12 year olds or dwarfs…but no, we were midgets.
As most people would—or at least the people in my family—Angie and I came up with a few ideas in reputable to being called “midgets.” The first was entirely Angie’s idea. In our “scare room” there was a staircase that gradually got smaller the closer you got to the top (kind of like the hallway in Willy Wonka). Well anyways, when people would start walking through our room Angie would stand up at the top of the staircase repeating, “I’M A GIANT! I’M A GIANT!” And would mosey on down the stairs to the people. I found this quite humorous because the people walking through would see how crammed she was at the top and then she’d walk down the stairs for them to discover she’s a quarter of their size. “Wait, wasn’t she saying I’M A GIANT?” Clever.
But our best idea to the “midget” name-calling was the totem scare. That’s right, the totem scare. The totem scare was one hell of a process and it took awhile for Angie and I to perfect it. First we would wait to hear people coming, run to the staircase, I get on Angie’s shoulders, and the really tricky part; balance. Our first run of the totem scare did not go so smoothly. We heard the people coming, ran to the stairs, I got on Angie’s shoulders, and as the people were walking in…we fell to the floor and laid there laughing. “Umm should we come back in?” Was their response – as we both still laid there laughing. “Yes, let’s try this over again,” we told them. So they went back in the hallway and we “re-hid” to scare them.
Being a “monster” is a job I will never forget and one that I still practice to this day; in front of the mirror, with friends and family, and yes, of course…scaring strangers. Also, I have perfected my ability to stand like a statue and will be adding it onto my resume skills.
