Best Served Cold!

One of my favorite things in the world to do is laugh. I don’t just mean a smile or a chuckle. I’m talking about laughing til I can’t talk, til tears are running down my face; the kind that will cause crow’s feet if I do it often enough (and it’s worth the trade). I hope this story makes you laugh.

My cousin, Paul, was born and raised in the great state of Texas. He was the baby of his family and, until my birth, was the youngest grandchild in the Cook family. While it was only for a couple of years, he’d obviously reveled in it.

Although we lived over a thousand miles apart and were only together a couple of times a year on family visits, we had a rivalry that must have begun in the playpen.

Paul tried his best to convince me that he was the apple of our grandmother’s eye. He was adamant that he deserved every bit of her attention and spoiling. He gave it his best shot to persuade me that all her hugs and kisses and special stories and things she let me get away with when my parents weren’t watching were just to appease her guilty conscience for loving him more!

Dear cousin even said that on her visits to Texas, Mama Cook confessed that she did love him best, that her heart beat only for him. I, of course, didn’t believe a word of it; nonetheless, I rubbed it in as often as possible that this dear woman lived in the same town as I did and that I got to talk to her every day and see her as much as I wanted – and that I got to spend the night with her at least once a week. And just in case all that wasn’t enough, that she made me rice pudding and chicken and dumplings. All of this proved, I told him, that indeed, she loved me the best of all.

 The truth was that Mama Cook had a quiverful of children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and a heart as big as the Lone Star state. She gave all of us lots of love and never showed any partiality to any of us, no matter what our place in the family rank.

Regardless, the summer I was 14, my niece, Melanie, age 12, and I went to spend a few weeks with our Texas relatives. Paul and I drew a line in the sand during this time and each dared the other to cross over. It was kept to a dull roar at night and on the weekends when Aunt Lillian and Uncle Walt were home. But they worked during the day. That was when it got real fun.

Our battle went into high gear very early one morning when Aunt Lillian let her youngest son drive us to church where we were meeting the youth group to leave for choir tour. My poor aunt and uncle would’ve probably sent us off to just about anywhere for a little solitude.

I hope Paul still repents every night for the traumatic wild ride he and two of his friends (“surprise” passengers) took us on over the next couple of hours as we were detouring all over town to get to the church.

He drove like a maniac for what seemed like days. Melanie and I were naïve, overprotected little Southern girls pretty much afraid of our own shadows. Not only were we freaked out but surely our mothers would’ve needed smelling salts had they known that while they thought we were safe and sound in the care of our aunt and uncle, we were speeding around with a Mario Andretti wanna–be and his two villains from the wild, wild West.

The only time he slowed down was to light firecrackers close enough to our faces to singe our innocent little eyelashes. The outlaws would hold the pyrotechnics until it was almost time for them to explode. Then out the car windows they’d throw them, into the yards of sleeping folks, all the while laughing like crazy bandits with each snap, crackle and pop.

My niece and I were scared half out of our wits. Paul had truly one-upped us with these shenanigans. If we ever made it back, he’d pay dearly for this, whatever it took to get even. 

I think you’ll agree that with the prudent use of three little words, we surely did.

While Paul was out one evening soon after the ride from Hades, Melanie and I found his high school yearbook. We studied it with a vengeance until we found…Melissa Farris.

She was hands-down the cutest girl in Paul’s class. And sure to be the homecoming queen and the captain of the cheerleading squad – and most of all, every boy’s dream date. There was no doubt that even our lanky, annoying cousin had noticed her. She was perfect for our plan.

That night, we went for it. We were giddy as we wrote a message for Paul on the chalkboard in the kitchen near the phone.

“Melissa Farris called,” we neatly penned then headed off to our room to wait for our prey. We counted the moments til we heard him pull in the driveway. He came in through the kitchen and then made a beeline to our bedroom door. He’d obviously seen our message and taken the bait. He called me into the hall.

“Did someone call me?” he asked, trying to be as suave, debonair and all-things-cool-and-hip as his sixteen-year-old self could be. He was hardly able to contain himself.

“Yeah, I think a girl did call you,” I told him, trying to maintain my own composure. “Her name was, um, Lisa or Melissa, something like that,” I stalled, trying my best to act sincere.

He turned his back to me and I’m sure I heard every teenage hormone in his body cheering as he made a fist and whispered an enthusiastic “YES!!!!”

Again he turned around to me, his eyebrows pursed and raised at the same time. He was trying to mask his incredulous smile and asked, “Are you sure her name was Melissa?” Okay, so I’m the one who should ask for forgiveness every night.

“Yeah, that was it. Melissa Farris,” I told him with my best innocent-face and then went back into our room. We hovered near the door as our cousin obviously dialed the number we’d found for the prom queen (she even had her own listing in the phone book!).

“Um, Melissa,” his voice was on the verge of quivering. He was more nervous than Melanie and I had been the evening of the Texas 500. “This is Paul.”

The silence was deafening.

“Holliday,” he then said through clenched teeth. At this point we knew we’d won big time as our boy realized he’d been had.

The battle was over and the Georgia cousins had more than evened the score! For the rest of our trip that summer, all we needed to say to put old Paul in his place were three little innocent words. To this day, I can’t say them without laughing.

“Melissa Farris called.”