Last night, Robin, back at home, asked her mother to send me a photo of herself wearing her new plastic vomit mask while her dog Sandy looked on warily from behind.

She delights in popping up behind Emma,  tapping her on the back, and watching her gasp or yell in shock.

Emma said Robin loves this makes and wears it all the time.  “It’s my own fault,” said Emma, “I bought it for her, and I won’t do that again.”

Now there is a kid after my own heart, she makes me a very proud grandfather, and she knew it, pleading with Emma to send me this photo.

She knew just what she was doing. After all, we spent an hour after dinner Sunday throwing paper spitballs at one another.

This struck a deep chord with me. Robin and I have more in common than I imagined.

When I was 10 or 11, I took the bus alone from Providence to Boston on many Saturdays. (Boston is just an hour away). My parents, as usual, never knew why I was going and never asked.

Mostly, I went there to see documentary films in an art movie house downtown. I’d take the bus anytime there was a film about Clarence Darrow, the Scopes Monkey Trial, or anything relating to the Army-McCarthy hearings.

All three obsessed me; I can still quote almost verbatim from Darrow’s cross-examination of William Jennings Bryan, the leading know-nothing of his time. I love it when bigots and ideologues are taken down in that way.

On those trips to Boston, I would stop at a dingy place called the Joke Store,  a place full of magical tricks, Whoopee Cushions, fake vomit, fake dog poop, fake scrambled eggs, and bacon.

These tricks were designed to make one’s parents crazy, and like Robin, I had the devil in me and loved nothing more than to make them crazy.

My father was both humorless and oblivious, and it was challenging to rattle him; my mother was much more sensitive and emotional, and she fell for everyone one of them – fake vomit on the floor, fake dog poop on her carpets, Whoopie cushions that made farting sounds, flies in fake plastic ice cubs, rubber cockroaches, and spiders, which I hid all over the kitchen.

I bought all of these beautiful things and relished waiting for the screams and shock. I especially enjoyed putting the Whoopie cushions on my father’s chair; he had no idea what to do, believing they were real.

Emma grasped the implications of this connection and said (hopelessly) that I should feel no pressure or obligation to send Robin any of these items, but we both know she has the devil in her and so do I.

My Joke Store is long gone, but there are plenty of online places where I can get all these things. And I got right on it.

I was up late searching them out online and shipping them to me; I’ll have to figure out a way to bypass Emma’s eagle eye and get them to Robin myself.

Don’t worry, Robin. Help is on the way. If necessary, I’ll take the train to New York and slip them to you on a visit.