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The Brown Trouser sleep over

Dad was known more for his wit and subtle humour than practical jokes. However this did not stop him from seizing upon
the occasional opportunistic prank.

This story relates to an incident when I was ten or eleven. There was a TV show called Creature Feature which showed B
grade horror movies such as Godzilla, The creature from the black lagoon, as well as my favourites, science fiction movies.

As we did not watch a great deal of TV when a special movie was to be shown we would like to make a special occasion of
it. And so it was that one weekend Creature Feature was going to show a Sci Fi horror classic “The Thing. My best friend
Rod was invited to a sleep over to watch the movie and eat some bad food.

All was going well, the two of us
were sitting on the floor directly in
front of the TV fully engrossed in the
action unfolding upon the screen.
As we only had a small Pye black
and white TV it was lucky the movie
was in black and white. We had
survived the bulk of the movie and
the survivors had barricaded them-
selves in the last hut while the mon-
ster slowly destroyed the barricades
and cheap styrofoam set. In a last
ditch effort the survivors had set a
trap in which they hoped would de-
stroy the rampaging monster.

Slowly and with much roaring and destruction of equipment, and the occasional survivor, the monster approached. As you
could image Rod and I were entirely captivated by the situation and were literally holding our breath in the build up of the
scene. (OK we were young and that was the height of cinematic magic back then).
Unbeknownst to us Dad was sitting on the longue behind and never one to let a chance go by, he had inflated a paper bag
and was waiting for the perfect time to explode it.

So as the monster was about to place its foot in the trap, Dad exploded the bag. The effect was to launch both Rod and my-
self off the ground and about 2 foot into the air. We landed in a pile of adrenaline to the laughter of all and sundry.
Rod and I still recall the incident whenever we catch up and strangely I don’t think we ever had another sleep over. I did not
know what happened to monster until many years later when I saw a repeat of the movie (where I made sure no one was
behind me).