My sister calls me. I answer, figuring it was the same old, same old. Our grandmother is driving her crazy. Our father is driving her crazy. Our stepmother is a gold-digging skank. She has a headache and therefore must be dying of an aneurysm. You know, the norm. Instead, she tells me this: "I found hairs in the bathroom."
Me: "Um, okay." (Who doesn't have hairs in the bathroom?)
Her Highness: "Hairs down there."
Me: "You mean pubes?"
Her Highness: "Yes, pubes, all in the sink."
Me: "And you felt the need to tell me this, why?"
Her Highness: "Because a ghost put them there."
(It's a good thing I didn't have Coke in my mouth right then, or I would have ruined my laptop.)
Me: "A ghost? A ghost put pubes in your sink?"
Her Highness: "Yes."
Me: "As opposed to say yourself or Chandler."
Her Highness: "Yes. I know I didn't do it, and Chandler swears right and left he didn't."
Me: "He's 11. He's hitting puberty. Maybe he shaved down there and was too embarrassed to tell you."
Her Highness: "He swears he didn't."
Me: "Are you sure you didn't just throw your razor up there after shaving and forget?"
Her Highness: "Yes, I'm sure."
Me: "Maybe Chandler and his classmates decided to play a practical joke on you."
Her Highness: "Why would they do that?"
Me: "Because they're boys, and they're inherently gross."
Her Highness: "He swears he didn't. I'm telling you, it's a ghost. It's probably the same one Chain Smoking Granny keeps hearing in the kitchen."
Me: "That's not a ghost. That's Jesus or Elvis or whoever the voices are in her head. I told you she imagined me standing in the doorway twice at Christmas and calling her a bitch."
Her Highness: "But maybe she didn't imagine it. Maybe it was a ghost doing it."
Me: "I was right down the hall. Don't you think I would have heard the ghost calling her a bitch and have clapped or at least given it a high five?"
Her Highness: "Not if you weren't paying attention."
Me: "What about the dogs? In the horror movies, the dogs always sense the ghost first."
Her Highness: "Well maybe they didn't this time. I bet you it was Mama or Ese." (Ese is what we called our great grandmother)
Me: "Were the hairs red?"
Her Highness: "No."
Me: "Then it wasn't Ese's hair."
Her Highness: "How do you know they were red?"
Me: "I don't, but she was a natural redhead so I'm just assuming the carpet matched the drapes."
Her Highness: "Fine, if they weren't Ese's, then they were Mama's."
Me: "First of all, Mama died in her own house. Watch a few movies. Ghosts tend to haunt the places they died in."
Her Highness: "So? Maybe she's so pissed at the way Chain Smoking Granny has been treating us, she decided to haunt her house instead."
Me: "Ok, so then why pubes? Do you think our dead mother has nothing better to do as a ghost than to break out the Nair and groom herself down there?"
Her Highness: "Maybe."
Me: "Oh...my...god..."
Her Highness: "So maybe it wasn't Mama, but it was a ghost. I know it was. Nothing else makes sense."
Me: "That's right. There's no other rational explanation than your bathroom is haunted by a ghost who wants to maintain her Brazilian in the afterlife."
I had all I could take of my sister's nonsense at that point so I hung up and spent the next hour shaking my head at how I could be related to someone so stupid. Now don't get me wrong. I don't discount the possibility of ghosts. Heck, to this day I'm still too scared to go into a dark bathroom, look into the mirror, and say Bloody Mary five times. However, what I do discount are ghosts who leave their pubes all over the bathroom sink. Let's see that show up on an episode of Ghost Hunters, and then we'll talk. Until then, all I can do is laugh and hope that, if I'm wrong, the poor ghost didn't end up with a bitchin' case of razor burn.
