The Dummy
Shortly after Halloween, Gayle and I were in Walgreens and they had masks of Nixon and Khrushchev on sale. We got one of each, thinking it would be fun masquerading around town with the masks on. It wasn’t as much fun as we had anticipated so, that evening, we picked up Bill and drove through town. We put the top down on the 59 Chevy and climbed in. I had on the mask of Nixon along with a chauffeur‘s hat, and Bill had on the mask of Khrushchev. Bill sat sideways in the back seat with his arms stretched across the side of the car, and Gayle laid on the seat next to Bill’s legs with his legs hanging out the other side. It made Khrushchev look 10 feet long. As we were driving around, a naked person came flying out from between two parked cars. I slammed on the brakes, sending both Bill and Gayle to the floor. I couldn’t stop fast enough, so I hit it. My heart was racing as we ran back to see if it was still alive. “Whew.” It was only a store dummy. Some kids threw a mannequin out in front of our car and I ran over it. Relieved, we started to leave when Bill said, “Hay, let’s put the dummy in the trunk with part of it hanging out. Gayle and I were always up for what Bill’s nimble mind could conceive. We put the dummy in the trunk with a sign on the back of the car which read HUMANITY. We left one leg and an arm hanging out as we drove through town. Everyone was honking at us and laughing. After 30 minutes or so we got pulled over by the cops. They thought it was funny, but the dummy had lost an arm about two blocks back, and I got a ticket for littering. They also confiscated our dummy. They said Statute 102 limits the number of dummies that can be transported in a moving vehicle at one time and there was one too many dummies in the car.