A Cynic’s Demise

There’s a cynic in every crowd. No matter what you say to them, they won’t believe you. They simply "Can’t be gotten." Well right alongside the cynic is an idealist. Someone who’s bent on proving the cynic wrong. And the stronger the cynic’s declaration, the harder the "idealist" pushes to topple the cynic.

You might say that Stephen Sutton’s wife fits the definition of a cynic. She has adamantly claimed that "Halloween is just for children" and that the masquerading and menacing atmosphere of the evening had no effect on her. Alongside that one cynic, there are three idealists. Stephen’s 11-year-old twins James and Thomas, and Stephen himself. That means Stephen’s wife didn’t have a chance from the get-go.

"My 11 year old twin boys and I planned ahead," Stephen, says, "knowing that mom always worked late and that she wouldn't be home until after dark on Halloween." They placed their EagleEye motion sensors outside and set up their HawkEye motion sensor in the living room. Then they placed an XCam2 out of the living room window closest to the driveway. Stephen says that once these preparations were made, his boys then hid in their upstairs bedroom and watched through the XCam2 via their computer monitor, looking at the front porch one floor below them.

"My wife is petrified of spiders and small crawling insects," Stephen says, "and she sometimes screams when she walks into spider webs." So Stephen and the twins prepared a small cotton blanket made from cotton packing materials, and placed a handful of small and large plastic spiders into the cotton along with a long thin plastic snake. "I hid in the bushes just below the front porch," Stephen says, "and I waited for her initial reaction to the blanket."

The twins saw her coming through their monitor thanks to XRay Vision. They waited until just the right moment, and quietly dropped the "critter infested" blanket onto the head and shoulders of their unsuspecting mother. "Needless to say," Stephen says, "a blood curdling scream would have been the least of our worries." Once the blanket hit her, she dropped her briefcase and her lunch container, and stepped backward within inches from an iron railing where Stephen was hiding. He growled as loud as he could, and reached out and grabbed her by the ankles with both hands. He tells us that "Just when we thought she couldn't scream any louder she surprised even us."

So mom, the cynic, was shown that she too was vulnerable to Halloween. Once the excitement of the moment was over, the boys couldn’t move any faster to get out there and start trick-or-treating. Their "X10 Assault" certainly was funny according to Stephen. Well to most of the participants anyway. Now Stephen and his 11-year-old twins, Thomas and James, refer to themselves as "The X10 Surprise Assault Boys."

We leave with a warning to all those cynics out there. The harder you assert that you cannot be gotten, the harder someone is going to try to get you, and it’s more than likely going to be someone that loves you enough to bring out the "terror" in you. Remember that we’re all vulnerable, especially to Halloween. Go out and enjoy your Halloween, but be sure and think through your practical jokes so that nobody gets hurt. Let’s be safe out there.

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