Phantom

When I was growing up, my family would periodically do this thing for Family Home Evening or other occasions where we make/bake.buy some goodies for a family, leave it on their doorstep, and then ring the doorbell before taking off running, then speeding away in the getaway car. We called it Phantom, I'm sure other people call it something else, but you get the general concept. It's "Ding-Dong-Ditch," but with treats for the victim instead of just annoying them.

So anyways, we were driving home this past Saturday night from a day spent in San Diego, and I felt like we had to do something for my sister Denise and her family, who have been in the midst of a frenzied effort to clean up and make their house ready for sale. We got some treats at a store near their place, and when we got to their neighborhood I couldn't decide if we should leave it and run, or drop in to say hi and see how things were going. We drove back and forth past their house no less than 4 times before I finally decided to go in. Mind you, it's about 9:30 at night, and I wasn't sure if kids would be up, if Denise would be up, or if we'd be welcome.

There were lights on in the house as Katie and I took the cookies up to the door, knocked, and covered the peephole. After a minute or two of silence, we debated ringing the doorbell or knocking again. Someone must be home, right? There were lights on...

We finally decided to go with the original ding-dong-ditch plan, so I jumped back into the car while Katie got ready to hit the doorbell. She set the cookies down, hit the bell, and started leaping for the car. As we barely started to pull away from the driveway a car was flashing its light at us as it came down the street, and as I looked in the rearview mirror Katie exclaimed that it was Denise and Derek!

We were laughing so hard as we pulled over, caught red-handed, as Derek and Denise came up and their daughters came out of the front door wondering who had been covering their peephole.

It was a riot, and proved how terrible Katie and I are at this game. Maybe we'll have to practice a little bit more.