Llano Drive, the closet under the stairway

When we added the extra story to our house in Plano, we ended up with a little closet under the stairs. The closet had been a small bar with metallic wallpaper that was used for little more than storage. I take that back. There was a faucet and sink that was used to fill up the watering can to water the plants in the atrium.

The small closet had a gradually lowered ceiling and some shelves. The details are a little fuzzy to me now. To get to the door of the closet you had to walk through the utility room and through the small bathroom. The closet may have housed many things, but the only thing I can remember are the soft drinks...the cokes.

Unlike my cousins, we were not allowed to have coke at any point during the day. I can still remember the shock of having a coke offered to me at breakfast. At breakfast?!! I couldn't recall the last ordinary day I had been allowed a coke, much less for breakfast. Cokes were very special in our house, only to be consumed on special occasions: birthdays, celebrations, holidays, as a remedy for a jelly fish sting, etc.

The amazing thing about that little closet was that you could lock the bathroom door and therefore, lock the closet. Thirsty for a coke? Sure. Special day? Not really, but now it is. My brother, sister, and I would go in, lock the door, and crack open a coke. The hard part was the evidence of the coke can. We would shut them in the drawers and hide them behind whatever we could find. I know my mother found random cans from time to time, but I don't remember getting in trouble for the evidence.

That closet was a great addition to the house.

Saltwater Coke

Some of the best days of my life have been spent in the little town of Galveston, Texas. The beaches were brown and carpeted in seaweed, but to me it was a glittering tropical paradise. Each day we'd load the car full of chairs, coolers, boogie boards, buckets, and the kitchen sink (well, maybe not that last one) and head down to the beach. We'd spend the morning splashing in the (murky) water, building sandy drip castles, and digging deep holes in the sand before grabbing our sandwiches and soft drinks and settling down to lunch. The sandwiches were sandy and the cokes were warm, but anything is satisfying when you're sitting out in the beating sun and watching the crashing waves.

After lunch, feeling especially mischevious, Ginger and I would sneak down to the water with our empty coke cans and carefully fill them halfway full of ocean water. Then we'd nonchalantly make our way back up to the rest of our group, pretending to drink from our soda cans, and trying our hardest not to giggle. Finally we'd approach our dad and proclaim that we simply could not finish our drinks, and would he like to have the rest? Perhaps because he was distracted, or maybe because the heat affected his powers of reason, he would always say "Sure" and take the can from us, not suspecting a thing. He would raise the can take a big swig until SPEW!! He was sputtering and spitting out the disgusting taste of saltwater. And Ginger and I would double over in laughter, as this clearly was the funniest thing in the world.

Looking back, I'm sure we weren't nearly as devious as we thought, and that he always knew what he was getting himself into. But is there anything funnier than pulling a prank on your dad? We absolutely loved it. To this day we have remembered our hilarious trick, and apparently it has stuck with us enough to become the name of this blog. Thanks, Dad!