Don't ever drop anything into a five-gallon plastic water bottle. This is not a threat. It is the story of a simple idea gone haywire. You don't really have to read any of this, if you only remember--don't ever drop anything into a five-gallon plastic water bottle.
It all started at Hicklebees. It's got to be one of my favorite stores in the whole world. It's right in the heart of downtown Willow Glen, and it's impossible to pass on foot without going inside and buying something. Even if I don't need anything.
So, last September, I'm in there to get a special treat for my son, and I find all the Halloween stuff out--including this fabulous hand in a bottle. It's a huge, white/pink-shaded dismembered hand, just floating in this large open-mouth glass jug, and it's perfect to add to the holiday gruesomes collection. So, I ask for one--and they tell me it's really just a little hand--only about a half-inch across, made out of some new space-age polymer that will grow when you put it in water. And, it's super cheap. So, I spend less than $3 for this great sight gag, drop it in the drawer and think nothing more about it until I'm out decorating for Halloween.
Now, I hate to brag (yeah, sure) but this year, I actually drove the Glen looking for great haunt spots. I stopped teens on the street, asking for their favorite haunted houses, and I cruised the center of the Glen on the lookout for anything of interest. I have to tell you, both my lookout and I decided I do have the best haunted place in the neighborhood. Nobody else even used dry ice to its full and proper potential for turning the front walk into a fog-bound London street, let alone got the sound effects out there. My motto is, if some poor child doesn't stop dead in their tracks, stare back at the doting parent on the street, panic, drop the bag of candy and run to their folks, well, I just haven't been doing my job.
So anyway, I'm getting ready about a week before the big day, and I realize I don't have a great glass jug for this dismembered hand, and I spend two days trying to buy a cheap one--no luck. I'm starting to get nervous, and just when I think we'll have to float it in the 100-year-old cauldron on the porch, I get the great idea of putting it into this five-gallon plastic water jug--it will look just swell, and afterwards, we can pour out the water and it can shrink back to its regular size. I can return the jug to my girlfriend, and we'll be fine.
This was short-sighted. The plan started out okay--we dropped in the little hand and added the water, and my 5-year-old got a great science experiment out of watching the polymers soaking up the water and expanding day by day, complete with little fingernails and a lifeline.
We stuck it out on the porch that night, spotlit the atrocity, and had a wonderful All Hallow's Eve. The next day, my husband poured out the water, and I told my girlfriend that I'd have her bottle back to her in three or four days so she could make her next water pick-up, no problem. Yeah, sure.
I failed to take into account that, once swollen, the hand would consume so much water that, when entombed in a large bottle with a little opening, it would have a terrarium effect. The water couldn't evaporate. The hand wasn't getting smaller.
A week went by, and Janet wanted her bottle back. I stalled for time and moved the bottle with the swollen hand near the floor heater. The hand didn't shrink. I bought her five gallons of water at the store, and dug out a hairdryer.
My son's next project was to hold the dryer over the little opening of the water bottle so that the dry heat could shrink the hand. It didn't budge. The amount of evaporation was so minimal that after another week, we had a huge palm and five stumpy digits protruding from it. Janet's husband Paul started reminding her that they were going to get billed for the missing bottle if I didn't cough it up. I got desperate.
I went down to the delivery center, with the hand in the bottle (you really need a visual aid to explain this kind of human tragedy), and after everyone quit laughing, I paid for the now useless bottle entrapping the fake human appendage, and picked up a full bottle for Janet's regular delivery.
Now I'm driving around town with an almost-empty five-gallon plastic water bottle containing a large pink plastic polymer hand with five shrunken fingers dangling off the bloated palm in search of a Sawzall.
Once we get it out, I think we'll use the bottle as a terrarium, since we know it holds water very well.
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
