Houdini's Assistant

One afternoon while minding my own business I was called downstairs by my brother. As I slowly walked down the stairs annoyed because I was interrupted from pretty much doing nothing aside from being left alone, he shouted, "Come on, I have something to show you."

He sounded really excited and went on to say he wanted to show me something in the basement. "What is it?" I replied. "Come on, I have to show you," he said ignoring the unamused sound of my voice. He proceeded to walk through the living room toward the basement stairs only glancing back to make sure that I was still following.

As I followed I wondered what he could possibly show me that was so exciting. I hoped it wasn't a new pet he had trapped in a shoe box or one of my mother's dishes (years before he had actually tried to capture a possum in one of her pots). When we reached the bottom of the stairs instead of turning to walk down the hall to his room he headed for the laundry room. He stood in front of the washer and dryer and said, "Watch this."


As he proceeded to climb into the dryer, contorting his - what I'm sure at that time was at least five-foot body to squeeze into the opening I asked, "What the heck are you doing?" "Just watch," he insisted. As I let out a deep breath and rolled my eyes toward the ceiling - still pretty much unamused he pulled his remaining leg in. "Okay, I'm leaving now," I said thinking that 'that' was the trick.


"No," he shouted. "Now close the door." "I am not going to close the door. Have you lost your mind?" asked turning to leave. "Come on just close it," he insisted. "Fine," I said and swung the door to the dryer closed. Just when I thought the trick was finally coming to an end I heard his now tunnel sounding voice yelling from inside of the dryer, "Now turn it on."


"Okay, you have really lost your mind. I am not turning it on," I yelled back to his voice. "Come on just really quick," he again insisted. I'm sure I must have thought something like, "Oh well, if he wants to do something stupid who am I to stand in his way?"

So I pressed the knob to turn the dryer on. Not two seconds after pressing the button I heard him screaming, "Turn it off! Turn it off!" I turned the dial to off, but the dryer did one last rotation. "Turn it off! Turn it off!" he yelled again. "I did. It is off!" I yelled back.


The next thing I knew, before the dryer came to a complete stop my brother kicked the dryer door open and quickly struggled to get out. "What happened?" I asked. "It was hot!" he responded. "Oh," was my reply and I turned to go back up the stairs.


Years later, I guess about ten or so, something reminded us of this incident and we retold it at a family gathering. What we thought would be an amusing story turned out to be a horrific tale to our audience and for some reason, I was the one who got fussed at.

"Why did you let him do that?" "What if he would have got burned and died?" - were among the questions I made out from the yelling. I couldn't understand why I was being yelled at - I guess I 'was' the oldest, but only by two years, and I guess he could have been burned, he was only wearing a pair of shorts - swimming trunks, I think, no shirt, shoes or socks, but that was his craziness not mine :o)


As we have retold the story over the years, one of the main questions people ask us is how old we were and they are awestruck when we say we were about fifteen and seventeen. Too bad Jackass wasn't around those days - we would have surely gotten a part on the show or movie. Too bad we did not have a video camera - we would have surely won on America's Funniest Videos not to mention YouTube - I'm sure we would have millions of hits. Maybe we could reenact it :o)