It all started out so innocently when my friend Beth called to ask if I'd help her alter a wedding dress. Now, I'm not by any means an expert seamstress but I at least know how to thread a needle and that puts me miles ahead of Beth.
The biggest problem I saw was that since Beth works nights and sleeps most of the day we would have an awful time getting together for fittings and subsequent alterations. To solve that problem we decided we needed to find a manikin or dress form in size 16, so I could work on the dress at my leisure.
Running thought the phone book listings we soon discovered that buying a new one was way out of her budget range, so we decided to place an ad in the local newspaper. The ad said we were open to buying if the price was right but we'd prefer to borrow one for a few weeks.
The ad harvested only one response. It came from an elderly lady who said had a half manikin half dress form in her attic that she thought was a size 16 and if we'd come get it we could have it for free.
As it happened that call came on a day when Beth was off work. So I telephoned her and told her to get herself up out of bed so we could pick up this strange sounding "maniform/dressikin."
Now that you have a bit of background, here's what happened:
When we arrived at the home of the lady who had called we discovered that she was in a wheel chair, which meant we were the ones that had to climb into the attic and examine the strange "maniform/dressikin" and then subsequently drag her down to the main floor. She was perfect in every way. Her body was soft like a dress form, but her head, legs, and arms were made of a hard composite material. Not only did she look very human-like, she even had a name: Modine .
So far so good... or not, depending on how you look at it. We wanted to sit Modine in the back seat of Beth's car, but Modine was stark naked and no matter what position we sat or laid her in we decided it was grounds for a ticket for lewd behavior in a public place. So we hauled her back into the old lady's house and asked if she had an old sheet or something we could wrap her in. The lady said that there were some old packing/moving pads in the garage and we were welcome to take one of those.
Perfect... or not, depending on your point of view. We wrapped Modine head to toe in the moving/packing pad and with Beth holding her legs and me holding her head and arms we hauled her out to the car again. On a whim, we decided to put Modine in the trunk of the car instead of the back seat.
Now picture if you will; two strange ladies hauling something that looks a lot like a body out of your elderly neighbors house and stuffing it into the trunk of a car... what would you do? Well of course you'd call the police. Someone did.
But it only gets better, because the latch on the trunk of Beth's car doesn't always hold, and it chose this particular day to NOT hold. About halfway home the trunk flew open. Beth was in the center lane and couldn't make it to the right hand lane to pull over, so at the first red stoplight I jumped out to slam it shut.
To my horror the pad had blown partially off exposing Modines upper torso and head. Her hair was askew, her head was flopped back, and one hand dangled precariously into open air. I tried to shove her back into the trunk, but her head wedged between the spare tire and the inside of the trunk. It wouldn't budge, so I grabbed her by the hair and began to push, pull and tug.
I can only imagine how it all looked. The people in cars to either side and behind us were talking adamantly on cell phones and snapping photos of me. I kept shouting "it's ok, she's just a manikin" but no one laughed. As the light turned green a car full of teenage girls slowly drove past...all of them started screaming and pulled out their cell phones in unison. I heard distant sirens closing fast...and yet, you know I just didn't think they were coming for us. Sure it looked bad, but she was just a "maniform/dressikin."
Finally I was able to shove Modine back into position in the trunk, but not before her head came off, slipped though my hands and bounced once on the pavement. I grabbed it by a shank of long black hair and tossed it to the back of the trunk and jumped back in the car. Beth was laughing hysterically, I wasn't.
We'd only driven about 2 blocks when we were surrounded by city police, state police and highway patrol vehicles. They were on both sides of us, behind us and cutting us off in front. A voice boomed from a loud speaker telling the driver (that would be Beth) to roll down her window and show both hands. The passenger (me) was told not to exit the car.
Beth was then told to exit the vehicle with both hands in the air, turn and put her hands on top of the vehicle. Next I was told to follow the same procedure they had just walked Beth through. I'm telling you having a dozen or so weapons pointed at you is nothing like it seems on television. It's down right heart stopping. So much so that Beth fainted! Some friend, checking out when I needed her the most!
With Beth laying stone cold on the pavement while they put handcuffs on her, that left me to try and explain that Modine was a "maniform/dressikin" A statement I now regret making because after being asked several times to repeat "maniform/dressikin" they had me take a breath-alizer test.
When the county coroner arrived and opened the trunk, he pronounced Modine to be a very dead "maniform/dressikin" but no one laughed. Some people just do not have a sense of humor!
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