kyarns: Happy Birthday Bob!

Many of our local customers know Bob. He's one of the former owners of the Mary T. Booth Yarn Shop, a favorite shop of many folks in these parts. He and his wife and sister-in-law retired in the winter of 2002, and I opened Kaleidoscope Yarns to fill the huge void that the closing of their shop had created.

Since the day I opened the shop, Bob has been eager to help in any and every way. He does so many things for us - from restocking, to unloading UPS shipments, putting yarn away, getting yarn for customers, helping us with our big sales, cutting down boxes, you name it... he's probably done it. If you knew Bob, you'd know that he likes being active and he likes to help out. He's a really generous man and likes to protect us "girls" from things like box cutters, heavy boxes, etc!

Well, today is Bob's 79th birthday. His favorite cake is chocolate cake with 7 minute frosting... which I know his family makes for him, and I've even made it for a couple of birthdays. We decided to surprise him today with some breakfast pastries, instead. But we had to find a way to get him to come to the shop without knowing that it was birthday related. See, he's a smart guy and it's difficult to pull one over on him. We decided to use our friend (a fake rat) to play a trick on him. We got a mouse trap and went into the basement and put the fake rat right next to it. It's SO fake looking, but Barb played this trick on me several weeks ago, and boy did I scream!

So at 8:30 this morning, Barb called Bob and said she had a big problem. She told him that we had a dead mouse in the basement and that Kalen had called in sick, so would he mind coming in to help us clean it up? Kalen isn't as scared of mice as Barb and I are, so if she were here, we would just make her clean it up. That's why we had to say she was out sick. Bob knows that Barb and I can't stand mice, dead or alive, so he said he'd be right over to help us take care of it. (See he always takes good care of us!)

Meanwhile, Kalen and I ran down into the basement and hid in the corner of the smaller room. After a bit, we heard Bob and Barb coming down the stairs. (Barb deserves an academy award for her performance, both on the phone to him and in person.) As they went into the far corner of the basement, Kalen and I snuck out and waited for Bob to realize that we had set him up...

All we heard was him saying how big this mouse was... that it was much bigger than normal ones... and then he said, "It doesn't even look like it's IN the trap?" He totally thought that it was real, and we were DYING of laughter. Finally he bent down to pick it up (poor thing had brought his own gloves!) and when he realized that it was fake, he started laughing. We came out singing happy birthday and then I think we all laughed for about 20 minutes straight.

It turns out he thought it was real, but was puzzled as to why it was dead, if it wasn't IN the trap. We had just put it right NEXT to the trap, thinking he'd know it was fake as soon as he saw it! He said he figured it must have gotten near the trap, the trap must have sprung, hit the mouse on it's head and knocked it out. Well, we laughed even harder at that!