summer stories 1993

i remember brian and his tall tale. he decided he was going to try and freak us all out. the biggest chicken i've ever met decided he was going to scare us. so he tells us this story about this old woman who lost her husband many years earlier. she was never able to get over the loss of him, and to that day she still visited his grave late at night and stood there weeping by his tombstone. on certain nights, if you dove by slowly enough you could see her walking the cemetery. ms. k and i of course, being the fearless ones, called him on his story. he swore on his dog's grave that it was true. i'm not sure how much weight that was supposed to give it. so we piled into my car. brian, ms. k, deana, mindo and myself. we drove by the cemetery and of course she was there standing by the tombstone as predicted. i heard a squeal from the back seat. to this day i swear that it was brian and not one of the girls. ms. k declared it a fake. brian stuck by his story. she and i decided to prove him a liar. i pulled into the church lot and parked the car. mindo was close to tears in the back begging me to drive home. i looked at ms. k and winked and we knew there was no turning back. i informed the car that we were getting out to investigate. asked if anyone was coming with us. turned and saw three heads buried in the seats, yes, one was brian. so ms. k and i walk to the grave, my heart felt like it was gonna pop out of my chest, but we had something to prove. we walked up to the grave only to discover that it was a statue next to the headstone of a woman weeping. freaky? yes, but a real woman? no. i looked at the best friend and asked her if she wanted to have some fun. she flashed me her wicked grin, assuring me that she did. i told her to follow my lead as i began to run back to the car. i saw three sets of eyes peering out the back window at us as we came running towards the car. mindo started screaming. they asked us what happened. we told them that we found the lady, walked up behind her, reached out for her and she fell over. ms. k pretended to be hysterical. that got 'em going. "drive drive drive" they yelled from the back seat. i pretend that the car wouldn't start. they were this close to opening the doors and running the entire way home. i started the engine and decided to drive back by the "fallen widow". ms. k yelled that she was standing back up. more screams came from the back, this time it was brian. i drove away so fast they had no idea what was going on. i thought that mindo was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. to this day we never bothered to tell any of them that we made the whole story up about the lady falling down and picking herself back up. not even to brian who knew the lady was a statue. we laugh about it all the time. and whenever we're sitting around in a group of people, drunk or bored, one of us always looks around and says, did you guys ever hear about the old woman in the graveyard...