I was once (and only once) the coolest 5th grader

The stormy weather tonight got me to thinking about ghosts, and I can't help but to think of the first time I ever held an entire room of strangers captive by a story.

Now this isn't the first time this sort of thing was allowed to happen. When I was a small child my older siblings would let me tell them stories during the commercials of Letterman (back when he was on NBC). These stories have all been lost to the abyss of time, but I am sure they were funny and full of adventure, suspense, and sex. At any rate, my brother and sister loved them. I never ran out either. Since then standing in front of people and talking has been something I have always enjoyed, as long as I am not acting.

The strange thing is that no one in public really seemed to find my stories that interesting. This blew my mind for many years, but in 5th grade something happen. I was at this nerdy Saturday school thing at a local college when the subject of ghosts came up with my lab partners. As we cut and glued balsa wood for our model rockets my new friends were having a proper and civilized chat on the realities of poltergeists. Having no experience with such things I began to tell them about the time I moved into a house haunted by one.

"I had the room up in the attic. I chose this one not because it was biggest (it was actually probably smaller than my little sister's) nor for the ease in getting in it (the stairs were really narrow and we could barely get my bed up them), but for the awesome stained glass windows on even point of the compass."

I had no idea where I was going with this. I had just started talking, but they had stopped what they were discussing and listening to me.

"The house was pretty old, but not like civil war old or something just pre-WWII old, you know, so it had some problems, but nothing that didn't seem fixable. I made sure that my room was very well insulated before we put up some good walls and posters, but then something started happening."

At this point I knew they couldn't believe me. They even said so, "Wow, what are you going to tell us the attic was haunted or something? Ha!"

"No, it was the whole house. Sometimes we would find whole drawers in the kitchen switched around and can labels were always wrong... unless we thought they were wrong."

"But then stuff started happening that was even more strange. At one point my sister woke up and felt like her room was too small. My parents even woke up and felt like someone had been watching them. I on the other hand knew when we finally had to leave."

Oh boy, did I have them.

"One night I was about to go to sleep, but as I started to go up to my room the mattress stated sliding down the stairs. I tried pushing it back up, but it wouldn't budge. I even got my dad to help, but no dice. the matress just wouldn't budge. Finally I just walk up to get some rest on the floor, but suddenly the mattress slides back up the stairs with that loud fabric rubbing sound. I saw it but I just though that my dad with my mom got it up th stairs, but hafter a few minutes the mattress just sort of goes back down. At this point I realized that my parents were no where near my room."

"I started to scream but couldn't. I was held back by some cold force. I was soon able to escape but not before watching an old man go to each of my colored windows and touching them. I was not sure what he was doing, but by the time I was freed it was morning and the light reveled that there were only clear pains of glass!"

They were so into it, "What happen?" I was just spouting things off of my head.

"Well my parents were mad at me at first, but then then even when I got sent to my room some strange stuff started happening around the rest of the house. It was pretty scary, but apparently stuff was flying around and hitting them in the head and stuff."

"We had to move out the very next day. Man, I miss that room."

By the time I was done with this story these dorks were entranced. I don't know why they believed me, but for some reason they felt I was an authority on this. Most of their questions were answered with an "I don't know," but only because they didn't jive with my story. By the end of class I didn't just have a story I had a continuity, full of interesting insights into a life I most certainly did not have.

Since then I often try to repeat this with varying degrees of success. I find the truth works better now, but often times there are little things you can do to tweak the truth and make it more interesting. In doing this the story becomes less of a "here's what happen" kind of thing to more of a "this one time" kind of thing.

And, of course, repeat stories are only for reruns and new friends.