Now I've seen everything...

Our phone rang after dinner tonight and it was our young Miss C... she had called me earlier in the day and asked if she and her friend L could stop by, so I thought she was now calling to tell me that they couldn't come over after all.

Instead of saying that, however, I heard C on the phone line: "Your front garden looks just beautiful!" I thanked her, and asked her where she was.

"I'm at the corner of your street, and I suggest you come outside because L and I have a surprise for you." Out the front door I went, and down from the corner came this small green plastic battery-operated jeep. In the front seat were C and L, and in the back trundle-seat was L's little three-year-old sister.

Had C not called me and told me to come outside to see their surprise, I wouldn't have guessed who was in that little green car. Both C and L were wearing Groucho-type black eyeglasses, complete with over-sized noses and mustaches. They had zombie-like plastic teeth in their mouths, wigs and crazy hats on their heads, layers of colorful clothing from head to fuzzy-stockinged feet, and their faces were covered with white powder, red rouge, black moles near their chins, and the brightest red lipstick. Not only were they hysterical to look at, but the over-sized noses and plastic zombie-teeth made their normally-sweet voices sound Bronx-like and menacing.

To top all of that, L's doll-sized little sister was also wearing zombie-teeth, rouge and lipstick, a colorful knitted sweater-- and a bicycle safety-helmet, being that she was in the trundle-seat of the vehicle. The girls started out in that little car at L's house, which is on our side of the subdivision, but still about seven streets away from our street.

To my horror, the girls had driven that plastic vehicle in the street, for goodness sake! I made them promise to drive back to L's house on the sidewalk, which they did. Neither C nor L realized that they weren't allowed (by law) to ride in that type of vehicle on a public road.

My husband wasn't home when the girls came down here to surprise us, but I called him at his office to see if he was finished and close to coming home. He wasn't, so I did the next best thing... I got the camera out and took some photos of the girls and he saw the pictures when he got home.

C and L were just too funny for words.... I laughed so hard that I had tears in my eyes, and I went to V's next door and asked her to come out and see the girls. V is a ninth-grade teacher at the high school, and after she was rendered speechless by the girls' costumes, she told them she was going back into her house to "contemplate the way we're teaching these young adults." And without missing a beat, C told her: "And may I say that you're doing an exemplary job!" -- Which was funnier than it sounds just being typed out, given the raspy voice from the combination of the plastic nose and teeth that C was talking through.

I had asked C if she passed anyone she knew between L's house and ours, and she said that two cars passed them with teenagers from the high school. Their high school friends didn't even know it was C and L in the little green car, and C added "...but they sure looked at us weird." (Why did that not surprise me?)

Too, too funny. Those girls may have just celebrated their 16th birthdays, but they're still young girls at heart, having the time of their lives, and not rushing into adulthood with both feet. (Or both noses and plastic teeth.)