hey, can you hear me

Nope, we’re not switching to Verizon.  You’ll see what I’m talking about in a minute or so.

We had a fun family games night (sans Lilly, who was applying her babysitter’s training to the Ohlson girls) with Bob and Dannah Gresh and their daughters (Lexi and Autumn) the other night.  They’ve moved into a new house, complete with a barn, 2 horses, and some ineffective barn cats.  They put bells on the cats’ collars, which might explain why there was a live little mouse eating the horse food…maybe.  Josie and Autumn clicked right away–Autumn is also adopted from China.  They were chattering in Mandarin all night long.  It was pretty cool.  We love getting together with the Gresh fam…mostly.

At some point in the evening, Bob and Levi decided to conspire against me.

Late at night, after everyone had gone to bed, I was downstairs in the laundryroom when I heard what I thought was Levi saying, “Hey, can you hear me?”  I, being the good dad, answered, “Yep, what’s up?”  Getting no response, I figured Levi was talking in his sleep (he does that…that’s when I hear all the secrets that he keeps, you know.)  I went about my business getting ready for bed until I heard it again.

Hey, can you hear me?

If you’re familiar with the story of Samuel being called by God, then you probably would have had the same reaction that I did.  I stopped short, and almost said out loud:

Lord, I can hear you.

Silence.  4 minutes of silence, followed by another repetition.  Hey, can you hear me? I started to suspect some funny business, and started rooting around in my bathroom for whatever was asking that question.  Cell phone set to a different alert?  Nope.  Ipod gone haywire?  Nope.  Pop-up window on the laptop barging in?  Nope.  I even checked the flip cam to see if something was going on.  Nothing.

But every 4 minutes the silence would be broken with the question: Hey, can you hear me?

I remembered hearing about something like this, so I used a lifeline and called my buddy Google, who gave me the answer I was looking for.

Bob had given Levi a noise-making annoyance device, marketed under the name Eviltron.  To be fair, it was a pretty good prank.  Levi turned it around on Lilly the next night, with much more satisfying results.  He had her on the verge of tears as she was freaking out in her room.  I could hear her screams all the way down in the basement.  She and Ali Bruce were convinced that it was me, and that the thing was calling her name!

I’m not a big revenge/get even guy, but if anyone has any good ideas for returning the favor, drop me a line.  Bob deserves a little something special, and Levi might be in for a little something as well.