27 days 'til 45

This is one of those stories that, when it comes to mind, is usually out of nowhere and always prompts me to think, "Oh yeah. I really did that."

Identical Cousins

I think I was probably 8 or 9 years old. My brother and I were usually alone in the house during the day in the summer. We had cousins up the street, a neighbor on the other side of our duplex, Mrs. Adams on the porch across the street, and a reasonable amount of good sense, so we felt safe by ourselves. There was always fun to be made. One day, I found a reddish-brown toupee in the top of the closet. I put it on, pulled it towards the front of my head, and put on a hat to hide my black hair. My mom had these light blue smocks that she would wear to work and I had asked for one that had gotten too worn to wear. I put it on over my clothes and decided to pretend that I was my cousin from Waxahachie.

I had spent a lot of time watching the Patty Duke Show, soap operas, and a bunch of other series where one of the characters turns out to have a long-lost relative or a stranger who looks exactly like him or her. (Gilligan's Island comes to mind).

I affected a "proper" accent (basically, I enunciated each word) and tried out my character on my cousins. Besides the ones who lived down the street, we had more cousins a few blocks away, within walking distance from our home. My brother was kind enough to go along with this charade. I have forgotten what my "cousin's" name was, but my brother introduced me to everyone and told them that I was our cousin and he was showing me around. I kept up that character until my mom came home from work.

I really believed that I had fooled everyone. No one argued that I was who I said I was. My family must have thought I was crazy.

Or they were just being really kind to an imaginative kid.