Old Ladies are SCARY!!!

I don't care who you are, old ladies can be very scary. My list of scariest things: 1)Dolls
2)Clowns
3)Pictures of dolls or clowns
4)Old ladies.
5) Scariest things on the internet

This post will be about number four on that list. And why is it that old women are definitely scarier than old men? Unless it's a dirty old man, but I still think the old lady wins out.

I'm going to tell a story about an old woman that we all know. She's the one who every kid on the block is afraid of. She is allergic to sunlight and fresh air. Most of her time is spent peeking through shutters and curtains. She has an annoying little dog that yips at everything that moves. She looks like the old witch from "Big Fish."


Her name was Corty.

If you had the pleasure of living on Hiatt Street, in Indianapolis, anytime from the 1800's to the present, then I'm sure you know who Corty is. She lived in one half of a double, with her little dog. The other half was occupied by her clinically insane sister, Leela. Leela was more funny for us than scary. She was often seen running her hands through her hair while saying her ABC's. I guess that is kind of scary. But it was Corty who instilled the fear of God in us.

We used to always play football in the middle of the street, and it seemed like every game came to an abrupt end when the ball would go rolling into Corty's yard. We knew she was watching us the whole time, just waiting for us to screw up. Since Ryan was always the quarterback who screwed up, it was usually Ryan who went to get it.

As we gathered on the opposite side of the street, cowering with fear and laughing at Ryan's demise, we began to see Corty's beedy eyes peeping in and out from between the shutters. As soon as Ryan crept onto the lawn, the door flew open and Corty came out screaming, "Get off of my lawn!! I'm gonna sick my dog on you!!"
Enter her annoying dog. Now this dog was one that should sound familiar as well. It would bark like crazy, and come charging at you, but as soon as you stepped on the sidewalk, it would stop and bark at you from the property. We knew that this dog would never cross that threshold, and that Ryan was safe as long as he stayed on the sidewalk.

Eventually, we would all leave and sneak back later for a quick retrieval of the ball. As we grew older, the fear was still there, but it soon became fun for us to scare each other. So we would play games that required a dare, and the dare would always be to go knock on Corty's door and then run like hell.

Since Ryan always seemed to lose these games, it was usually Ryan who had to knock and run. We called it "nigger knocking," which is an extremely racist comment, but at the time we were kids who didn't know any better, and that's just what it was called.

Corty's defensive tactics had increased with time, and she soon resorted to threats of calling the cops. After about two or three "nigger knocks," she would go to the back of the house, and all of a sudden we would hear sirens. All of us would scramble in every direction, running for our lives. Soon we noticed that the sirens never got any closer. Apparantely, Corty had some device that made siren noises. Well, that just made us want to do it even more.

That poor old woman put up with us for about five years, until we were too old to be scared, and started worrying more about younger women. That's a shame.

Cheers to all of the scary old women who make little boys young lives a little more adventurous; and thank you Corty, wherever you are, for the wonderful childhood memories.

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