The Great Potato Mystery

My eldest sister has accused me of sending my mother a potato with a message for her birthday. My mother excitedly sent me a text message just the other day thanking me for said potato, but to her chagrin, I admitted that it was not me who sent it. After asking my wife if she sent it, I went online (and I know this is going to sound bad, but I had to do it!) and checked out bank accounts to see if there was a charge for the potato. Nope! My wife is even innocent of this spudicious activity.

So, who can it be? I believe that it is one of my dear siblings that sent the spud to my mother. At this point, she is going crazy trying to figure out who sent the spud to her. Would I dare attempt to drive my dear old mother crazy? May it never be! I love her too much to add to her neurosis. But there are others who may attempt to drive her deeper into despair.

For instance, my eldest sister, Dina. I believe that because she has been living with my mother, caring for her (as she says), she is perhaps the most likely candidate for sending the spud. You see, after living with my mother for this long, she is going crazy because my mother cleans up after her all the time. If Dina leaves a cup on the lamp table, my mother quickly picks it up and washes it. Who can blame her? Leaving all those rings of water on the tables! So Dina digs up this plan to trick the whole family as to who sent the potato.

She convincingly places the order for the anonymous potato from a store close to my home, therefore throwing my poor old mother off her tracks and making her believe that I am the guilty party. When the potato arrives, she quickly and undoubtedly tells my mother to text me and thank me for the gift that I sent to her. I reply, “What gift?” Her response, no doubt forced by my eldest sister, “The one YOU sent me!” There it is, folks. You can hear the tone of the response: fear that my Amazonian sister will bring more cruel pranks upon her unwittingly.

So I write this post today to declare my innocence. You see, My eldest sister has pulled pranks on all of her sweet and righteous family members. All of her siblings have faced some sort of cruel joke of making us believe one thing or another. Why when I was a wee lad she convinced me that I was left upon the doorstep of my family’s home and they had no idea what to do with me so they took me in and let me sleep in the dog bed with our Beagle, Patches. It was funny to her as I cried and cried believing that my parents were somewhere and I’d never know who they are. I’m so grateful that my sweet mother told me the truth and scolded the offender and that my father came to my aid as well.

And what about all the times that she has tricked our poor baby brother, Richard, by telling him not to look at something knowing full well that he will not be able to do it. He has to look! Like the time she told him not to look at her landlord’s right foot that was missing three toes because he was conscious of it. What does poor Richard do? He can’t help but stare at the landlord’s foot offending him and practically getting into a fist fight for her suggestion. If it wasn’t for my niece, Jodie, who everyone loves, the landlord would’ve surely decked my baby brother right then and there, but the landlord loved Jodie like his own daughter.

And what about the time that she tried to tell all of us that there was a ghost in the house that our parents raised us in? Yes! A ghost! We went into the bathroom, she brought her favorite candle in there and lit it and had all of us sit in a circle when she all of a sudden screamed, “All spirits arise!” And what happens? The sink faucet turns on mysteriously! Or was it a mystery? With her lanky arms and legs I believe she is the one who turned the water faucet on only to see all of us scrambling for the bathroom door to run out, my two older brothers trampling my twin sister and me and our poor baby brother.

She has taunted us for years with said pranks. And now, for my dear old mother, she is driving her insane by not telling her the truth that she is the Spudinator! She is the root of the problem!