Okay, so here is the story; the story of “The Hand.” I believe it was the summer of the 8th or 9th grade, (2002 or 2003). Casey, I’m not sure where you found this fake rubber Halloween hand, as much as I can picture you going to the store to buy one purposely for this story, I think you may have gotten it from your basement where your brother and his friends designed their own haunted house. Anyway, we brought this fake rubber bloody Halloween hand down to the Sea Isle shore house. One of us had the brilliant idea to startle the public (as usual) with this hand. So we tied a string (one time a thin rope that you could clearly see, because we ran out of string) to the hand and cast it off the side of the deck onto the sidewalk. We then slowly realed it up so it was about eye level to the children, parents, (what have you), walking along the sidewalk. Even if a person did not have a reaction it didn’t matter, because we almost peed our pants each and every time we dangled that hand off the side of the deck. I never laughed so hard in my life, and I think Casey would say the same. I even laugh while telling the story, (I’m even smiling right now). In fact this is one of my favorite stories/memories of all time. One evening after dinner we decided to do it again. A group of teenage boys (of course) saw the hand and started talking to us. At this point it was too late to play it cool and pretend like we weren’t actually doing this; so we played around with them. We laid flat on the floor, half in the room, and half on the lower deck outside Casey’s bedroom and starting jerking the hand upwards and then lowering it down (to tease these kids). They were jumping in the air trying to grab the hand and ‘re asked us if they could please borrow it. They said that they would give it back etc.,etc. We started making smart remarks from the deck (like the cool kids we were) and I guess ‘karma’ came back around because all of the sudden the string/rope BROKE! and the hand fell onto the sidewalk! The boys laughed, kidnapped the hand and quickly road away on their bikes. We were mortified, I remember personally being devestated! We were planning on what we could say to these boys if they came back around. I remember saying to Casey, “use your acting skills and tell them it belonged to a beloved person in your family who passed away, and fake cry!” She replied, “Hold on, I have to think about this.” I remember her pondering. I really had almost convinced her to do this. But it didn’t matter, for those boys never came back around. BUT– there is a but.. some older man, who was partially mentally challenged was walking down the street later during the night (and yes we were still out on the deck, desperate to get this hand back). I ran out into the street and asked him if he had seen the hand. He said he saw some boys up on the promenade on bikes with the hand dangling from one of the bikes. I am not sure if he was telling the truth or not, but the fact that he brought up the bikes made me wonder. We were very upset that we never got that hand back, although Casey did surprise me with another treat shortly after for the next summer – a fake, (well I’d hope so), bloody rubber Halloween ARM!!! I remember we did try the arm, although the memory of people’s reactions are vague to me; but I think that’s just because of our dedication to “The Hand.” After we lost the hand, we both had in our AIM Profiles, “RIP The Hand.”