How to Freak Out Someone You Live With

(I know it should be "someone with whom you live," but I am not that pretentious.)

H loves to try to sneak up on me. When I am typing on the computer in the office, he will attempt to silently climb the stairs and peek his head around the corner to see if his surprise attack is working. When I am downstairs watching tv in the living room, he will try to get behind the couch and jump up to scare me. When I am in the shower, he will try to sneak into the bathroom and then stare at me until I notice him. I almost always catch him, so he rarely gets to scare me. Which is good, because I hate to be scared.

Last night, when we were going up to bed, I went to the kitchen to get some water. H turned off all the lights in the house, and then hid on the stairs. I thought he was up in the bedroom. I tried to walk to the bedroom in the dark. I got to the bottom of the stairs, sensed that someone/something was there and SCREAMED. It was the loudest, highest scream I have ever created. Then I started hysterically
laughing, which turned into crying. H was TOTALLY freaked out. He looked at me with big, sad, frightened eyes, but it took me a few minutes to stop crying.

H claims now that he was even more scared by the incident than I was. But I didn't hear him screaming like a banshee, so I don't think he has much of a case. The good news is that I think now he has finally learned his lesson about trying to scare me!