The SCARY Guy: A Halloween Story Intro:THEY MEET!

The Scary Guy is an original story that was created by myself and my 11 year old friend Jasper Keeny T. It is so insanely funny that you may end up laughing yourself to tears, there is some partial truth to it too.
What I've written here so far is all real!
The scary guy is a DOUBLE for Pope Benedict!

One sunny Saturday JT and I were walking down Cornell Ave. in North Berkeley on our way to Solano Ave. for a soda and a game of Jr Pacman (the version where the board is endless)suddenly Jasper pulled my arm.
"Amanda, there's this guy standing in that window smiling at us."
I turned around and looked back at a very dilpatated house (car on the lawn, shrubs untended, sour grass in droves etc) that stands only a few doors up from JT's. In a long window stood a tall older slightly bell shaped man with a fisherman's hat and a happy demented look in his eye. He waved at us and kept staring. He kept staring at us for blocks.

It only took us about three seconds to determine that:
1.He was totally scary
2.Was probably an evil illusionist
3.That his name was 'Bill Clyde Benningham'
4.That even though his house was totally run down, that he had hidden vaults of gold.

We assigned a ringtone to be played everytime we walked by his house (Nokia 'Carnival' whose last three notes seem to chime 'Sca-ree-guy')
The next day we strolled past and stood in front of the house, in seconds he was at the window waving and then he was at the door!
"Hi. How are you?' he said the scariest voice ever
"Oh hi. I'm Amanda and this is Jasper...is that your cat?"
I said nervously gesturing to a cute Lynx like cat that sat perched on the mailbox.
'No. That's Tommy the neighbor's cat. That's Tommy.'
Tommy looked at us and meowed. Jasper and I noticed that the Scary Guy had been drinking Diet Dr.Skipper, Safeway's version of Diet Dr.Pepper. A can stood by an open window.
'Well have a nice day' I said smiling that babysitter smile.We ran down the street screaming in terror.

It took about thirty seconds to then figure out that:
1.Tommy was once friends with Bill Clyde Benningham but because of professional jealously when they both were in the US Navy during WW Two, Bill turned Tommy into a cat with an ancient Eyptian Mau/Bast spell.Tommy was now trapped living on table scraps and sleeping in sour grass.
2.Safeway select Skipper and Safeway Select Diet Dr.Skipper were how The Scary Guy executed his spells. People were tricked into drinking it and then they became little critters.
3.Bill had an equally evil brother named 'Bernie Curtis Benningham'
4.Both Bernie and Bill looked like the new Pope.
5.Bernie prefered Albertson's Dr. Bold to Safeway Select.
We only saw the Scary Guy a few more times after that, we either said a breif 'hello' or just played our spooky cell phone song and ran by in abject fear.

Scary times were ahead...TO BE CONTINUED!!!!

Today you are missed more than usual

I am trying to get past a bad cold and wishing that I had NyQuil.
I was thinking all through this past week about when I was about 20 or 21 years old and used to hang out at The San Francisco Zoo. I had visited almost by accident when friends of mine going to Santa Rosa Junior College had to spend a few hours observing the Colobus Monkey exhibit for their Anthropology courses. The entire place was built during FDR's alphabet soup era of public works program, this one fell under the WPA.
But by the time I was hanging out there it was no longer an example of New Deal triumphs it was simply a dilapidated and unhealthy zoo. Animals died frequently from from easily treatable illnesses and occasionally vandals harmed and even killed animals out of their own mental sickness.
I had a particular fondness for the wild and big cats.
Pretty soon I was obsessed with working there and protecting these animals.
An elderly but spry woman was there almost daily and knew all the lions by name. As i became a regular in my matching Guess mini skirt ensembles, she told me all about the new director and the low down on all the zoo keepers.