Lynn's Comments: I don't know who came up with this disgusting, yet satisfying little prank... my brother or me. I think I'll take the credit. Mom was a stickler, as I've said, for cleanliness. Long before the clinical admonishment to wash our hands as often as possible, Mom inspected our digits with surgical scrutiny. She once told me that her mother fired a maid because she said that making bread was a good way to clean her nails! Mom regularly washed walls, countertops, baseboards and knobs to make sure we were as germ free as possible. Naturally, it was our prerogative to return these surfaces to their germ-laden norm.
The long socks we wore bore the remnants of rubber, road salt, floorboards and feet by day's end and smelled wonderfully wicked. I remember pulling up my dirty socks, rolling them down my leg and thinking, as the end popped off my foot, that it looked a lot like a fetid kind of hat. When these "hats" didn't do much for my dolls, I decided to put them on the doorknobs- to the great annoyance of mother, who refused to touch them, much less turn the handle. Her British admonishments were worth hearing. "Dreadful, dreadful, dreadful!" and "You miserable recalcitrant!" and "This is the very LIMIT!" made us giggle behind our hands. I look back at it all now and wonder how she put up with us... perhaps it's because, despite her militant need for order and discipline, she had a really good sense of humour.
