This post is about me and my sister... but this is Alias... and I don't have one, so my sister will need one :o) Especially if Mom ever reads it! Let's see, my sister is very pretty, who is her Alias? Well, I think I will call her Evangeline Lilly. Perfect. Now, on with the story. Have you ever read the book 'The Best Christmas Pageant Ever'? The kids who were always climbing on the roof, setting fire to things, and bungee-jumping off the garage door... that was us. Well it was whenever Mom and Dad were gone. 
None of us could be blamed for starting it all the time, and none of us could be blamed for just going along with it all the time either. This particular day started out innocent enough. It was a bright Saturday morning and there was a yard sale a couple of streets over. We always liked to go see what kind of treasures other people regarded as junk and we found a really good one that day. It was a large, old-looking, long-neck bottle. We imagined that it had been found on a beach with a note in it that was so old that it crumbled to dust when the cork was taken out. It was amazing. We paid the quarter for it gladly, thinking we had just paid it for something that could be worth much more... especially for the imagination we found in it. We took it home and on our way decided that we were going to put another letter in it, something that looked old and mysterious. Well, there was one problem with that, we didn't have any old or mysterious looking letters. No matter, all we needed was regular paper, some carefully written calligraphy, and a lighter. Luckily for us, I had some calligraphy pens and knew how to write it reasonably well. Unluckily, however, was the problem that we had no lighter. That wasn't going to stop us though. We had something just as good... a gas stove! So we set to work making our letter. We thought that to make it seem authentic and mysterious we'd make it from the captain of a great ship. The ship was attacked by pirates and the captain was the sole survivor. He was on a deserted island, and would die shortly if his letter was not quickly responded to. I wrote it all out and it was perfect. Now, what was the name of this brave captain. Something very generic and unknown. That way nobody would know if he really existed. So the letter was signed Captain John Smith. John Smith... Captain John Smith. Clearly, we had not yet discovered Pocahontas. Anyway, it was perfect. We went to the stove, turned it on low, and carefully singed the edges of the letter so it was browned and jagged. It was perfect! Well, until we tried rolling it up and it cracked right in half! Oh no! All that work! No matter, we were children, and we had time! We did it again, another letter, another perfect signature. This time we didn't brown all of it, but when we put the hole in it to make it look tattered, it just looked like a white paper with a hole burnt into it. That wouldn't do. We tried it again, rolling the paper up first, so it wouldn't break when it had been burnt and browned. Any of you who've ever tried that know that the entire thing went up in flames without a chance of saving it. We decided that browned paper just wasn't going to work and what's the next best thing in that situation? A wax stamp to seal it! We had some candles and we found something that would make a cool looking seal. Now we just needed the wax to be melted so we could fashion the perfect stamp. We only had a small amount of wax so we didn't want to use a big pan to melt it in. What was like a pan, but much smaller? A metal measuring cup! It was just right! We put the candle in it and turned on the stove. We turned it up a little because we didn't want to wait all day for it to melt. We watched it until we were bored and then went to our room to get some candy. We were there long enough to completely forget about the stove. After some time we heard a knock at the door. It was our wonderful friend from across the street, Kristen Dunst. We opened the door and before she said anything she looked past us into the house and her jaw dropped."Hey! What's up? ...Want some candy? ...Kristen?"
She pointed toward the kitchen, unable to make a sound. "OH NO!!! THE CANDLE!!!" Evangeline and I went racing into the kitchen where we saw our little 'pan' engulfed in flames that were easily 4 feet high!!!! We knew what to do, we'd put out fires before. We just needed some baking soda! We looked in the cupboard next to the stove and there wasn't any there! There was baking powder though! That was close enough right? We dumped it all over and watched as it lit on fire! Now the flame was higher and thicker with it's new fuel and we panicked! Hurry, what's fool-proof! Suffocate it! Ok so we grabbed the pot we had discarded earlier for its size and put it over the top of the fire. We anxiously waited, not knowing how long it takes to smother a fire. When we were slightly sure it might be out, Evangeline and I carefully lifted the pan and looked to see if it was dark. It was! Oh! We're saved! We triumphantly took the pan off the stove as we simultaneously discovered our folly in doing so. A huge plume of thick black smoke billowed up, covering the wall, the kitchen ceiling, and the kitchen light cover on its way toward it's resting place... the 16 foot vaulted 'popcorn' ceiling of the dining room. "Ohhhh noooooo..." I gasped. "Mom is gonna be home in half an hour! Quick! We have to clean it!" Evangeline said emphatically. Kirsten decided she didn't want to help clean our mess and went home. We got bowls of soapy water and washcloths but couldn't reach very much of the ceiling. We then tried using the mop for the kitchen light. It wasn't working. Ok, maybe we can stall. If she doesn't notice it until night then we can clean it after she's gone to bed. Good idea. Ok, you keep trying and I'll try to get the smoke out of the house. We opened the back door and used a towel to try and fan out the smoke that still obviously lingered in it's nook. The towel wasn't stirring the air much, so we decided to just keep trying as long as we could. Our German Shepherd loved to come inside, and usually jumped at every chance to do so. This time, he stayed away from the door. Evangeline cleaned up the soap bowls and put the mop away. She cleaned as much of the stove as would come clean and then we heard it. The garage door opening. We scrambled to close the door and throw the towel in the laundry room, gave the kitchen one last look, and ran to our room to pretend we had been in there all along. We held our breaths as the moments ticked by. Were we safe? Would she notice? Well, Mom wasn't born yesterday... and she had raised us up from infancy. She knew. She hadn't been in the door even one minute before we heard a very stern mother, "Girls... get in here!" Uh oh. When we got to the kitchen she had set her things down and she was gesturing toward the kitchen light cover. "What happened in here?" Invoking fear of death, while in hindsight it's easy to see that she, seeing that all was really ok, was intending to do that very thing. Our punishment? Well, we spent what seemed like ten hours cleaning and scrubbing what we could reach. We got quite a deserved lecture from Dad when he got home, and we were grounded for the duration of our lives. Luckily, that was lessened as time went on. Where is that bottle now? I still have it. Instead of the old, mysterious letter from the obscure Captain John Smith, it now sits filled halfway with white sand and has roses coming out the top. A gentle reminder to just be smart.
