She looked at me in shock and despair, her eyes bulging out of her skull and her jaw almost touching the floor.

“Oh NO! What are we going to do now??”

We had been playing together as usual, me with my Star Wars figures and my sister with her Care Bears. When we were children, we had this strange hybrid fantasy world where Tattooine was a short hyperspace jump away from the Bears’ cloudy sky home of Care-A-Lot, so the denizens of one universe regularly made appearances in the other. During a recent visit to Jabba’s palace, “Lucky” Bear spilled his drink on one of Jabba’s finely crafted rugs and had to pay the penalty.

Poor Lucky was made to take the sand skiff out into the desert, along with Gammorean Guard and Moss Man (from He-Man fame – arguably the dumbest toy ever made... he was a man covered in green flocking that smelled funky, and you couldn’t use him with the Slime Pit. He had to die!). Their fates were to walk the plank and perish eternally in the makeshift Sarlaac Pit we created by lifting the grating off of the floor vent for the old gas furnace and revealing the shadowy depths within. It was all for the best, anyway - I still to this day have a permanent waffle print on my foot from stepping on that grating while the heat was on.

We loved playing with the Sarlaac Pit – it was our favorite scenario. Since we weren’t really allowed to play outside due to the condition of our neighborhood, we had to do it indoors. However, there was only one vent in the house large enough to really do it right and that was in my sister’s old room. Normally, we weren’t allowed in that room because of all the bums and vagrants that would come up to the back of the house and rattle the burglar bars, but my mother relented that day after our constant prattling. After all, I had just gotten the skiff for Christmas and it would be a shame if there were no pit to use it with.

Her concerns were a little deeper than just random dreck and ghetto trash rattling some bars on the back window. After all, we had lived with that for years. Her main issue was we were extremely clumsy kids. It was a sure bet that, given time, the few toys she had worked so hard to buy us would end up down the chute and lost forever. In an effort to curb this, she kept us in check by telling us that if we ever dropped a toy into the duct, it would catch the house on fire and everything would burn.

We lived in terror that this would happen and tried every way we could think of to keep it from being a possibility. Everything from a pillow case to my mother’s panty hose that came in the little egg-shaped container was draped across the opening to impede the free-fall of any toy we sacrificed to the almighty Sarlaac. The problem was, everything we tried intruded upon the overall ‘look and feel’ of the vent duct as a pit. Everything except for the yellow netting found wrapped around whole turkeys. It was perfect: big, thin, and the color of sand. Luckily for us, my mother had just purchased a turkey a few days previous. We counted on this net to catch any of the wayward figures that we sacrificed to the hungry Pit.

Well, the netting – stringy and mostly melted from having been strung across the vent for the past few hours while the heat was on – didn’t really do its job. Jenny made Lucky march to the edge of the plank, say his last words, and then plunge to his demise. Unfortunately, once she let go of him, Lucky the Care Bear proved to be too much of a load and went tumbling haphazardly past the protective netting and down the chute.

Every clang and bump that echoed up from the vent rang doubly loud in our stomachs. We knew those sounds heralded an impending inferno. Jenny was petrified – she was the one who dropped Lucky into the pit, so technically it was going to be her fault when our home was incinerated.

“Joe!” she exclaimed, pulling my attention away from the dark and foreboding hole to the vast unknown and onto her horrified expression. “What are we going to do?? The house may catch fire!”

The way I saw it, there was only one thing we could do.

”You can fit in there. I say you go get it!”

”NO WAY! I can’t go get it! I’ll fall in and get stuck!”

”Don’t worry, I’ll hold you! You HAVE to go get it, you put it there. If you don’t, our house will burn down!”

”But YOU made me do it! I didn’t want to kill Lucky and you said that he displeased the Hutt family! It’s YOUR fault!”

”Is NOT!”

”Is SO!”

This wacky cross-examination continued on for a few minutes until finally, in a flash of brilliance, I devised a plan.

“Ok, I know! You can tie the sheets around your waist. I’ll hold them while you go get the bear.”

”Why don’t YOU go get it?!?”

”Because I can’t fit, dummy! Besides, YOU put it there!”

After a few more minutes of general bickering, Jenny finally relented and agrdeed to fish around the vent for the wayward Care Bear.

We pulled the sheets off of her bed and fashioned a makeshift harness by tying the sheet around her waist – it was SUPER secure, because I used a double knot. She slowly poked her head into the vent, noting that she couldn’t see anything at all.

”How am I supposed to find him if I can’t even see him??”

”Hmm… let me think...”

Another grand idea materialzed: “I know!”

And with that, I left the room and headed to the kitchen. My mother was seated at the breakfast table, reading “Passions of Lust” or some other such nonsense. Very casually, I tried to make light and un-foreboding conversation.

“Hey mama.”

”Hey sweetheart.”

“Whatcha doin?”

”Just reading a little, honey. What do you need?”

Located in the random tool drawer beside the sink were an Eveready flashlight and some duct tape. Should I make a play to obtain these items, it would have completely blown the gig.

”Umm, I just need a few… batteries! Yeah, My X-wing is low on power.”

”Ok,” She said, never removing her eyes from her harlequin novel, “You know where they are.”

”Thanks, mama!”

I pulled out the drawer and reached in, the entire time watching my mother like a hawk. I pulled out the flashlight and tucked it into my shorts, then grabbed the duct tape and put it under my shirt.

”Ok, got ‘em! Later mom!”

”Ok, honey, have fun…”

I returned to our little fiasco, gear in hand. “We can use these.”

”Umm… I understand the flashlight, but why the tape?”

”To tape it to your head, dummy! You might drop it down the vent if you hold it.”

She thought about it a second, then said ”Yeah, I guess that makes sense…”

She was 5 and I am her older brother. A lot of things made sense to her that probably shouldn't have.

I proceeded to place the flashlight flat against the top of her skull, pointing outward so that it shone wherever she turned her head. I then looped what must have been 100 yards of duct tape around the flashlight and her skull to base of her jaw and back up. By the time I was done, she was clad in a gigantic silver helmet with a huge hump at the crest of her head where the flashlight rested.

”Ok, it’s on there. Are you ready?”

”Yeah, I’m ready.”

She poked her head back into the vent, noting that she still couldn’t see anything.

“It’s still dark! You forgot to turn it on, you dork!”

I hoisted her back up and proceeded to unwrap the tape to get to the switch. It took almost 10 minutes to get to the base layer of the quacky adhesive strip, at which point I began peeling it off of her skin and hair.

It wasn’t pretty.

Jenny muffled as best she could her howls of pain while I tried to separate the tape from her head. Finally giving up, it was determined that there was no way this tape was coming out of her hair.

”Oh, NO! Look what you did to me!!!”

”ME? It was your idea!”

”NO IT WASN’T! How is this my fault?? You are the one who came up with this! You taped the flashlight to my head, superdork!”

”Well, you let me, you moron!! So there!! Besides, we can just cut it out.”

Sheer panic crossed her face.

”NO! Please don’t cut my hair!”

”What else can we do? It’s not going to come out.”

She pondered for a moment. She went over to the mirror and took a look: a gigantic silver and brown wad bobbed back and forth atop her head. She looked like the worst rendition of medusa I had ever seen.

She finally realized that I was right. I ran into my mother’s bedroom and grabbed her Fiskars, then proceeded to lop the disgusting lump off of my sister’s head – 100 yards of duct tape and her once-beautiful waist length hair.

“There, that’s the last of it.”

”Ok, so what now?”

”We turn it on and re-tape it!”

”No, I don’t wanna do that again…”

”Jen, you have to get that bear out of the vent or it’s FWOOOSH!” I said, raising my hands and twiddling my fingers much the way a Baptist minister does when he is describing Hell.

Her eyes nearly fell out of her skull at the thought, and quickly she grabbed the flashlight, turned it on, and held it in place on top of her head. I wrapped the rest of the roll of tape around the light and her head and once again, she was down peeking in the vent to try and spot Lucky.

“OK, I think I see him! But I can’t reach him.”

”Put both arms in, I’ll hold you tight!”

”I don’t think that’s a good idea…”

”FWOOOOSH!”

”Ok, Ok! I’ll do it!!” and with that, she came back up, put her hands in front of her like she was praying and dove head-first into the vent. I held her ankles in an effort to keep her from slipping forever into the abyss.

She yelled up for me to lower her a bit further, so I loosened my resistance and let her slide down a bit more. “Just a little more,” she called up.

I let her go just a tiny bit more, and once her hips crossed the threshold and dipped below the grating fasteners, I lost my grip and she plummeted headlong down the vent. Her feet barley stuck out above the floor line.

Shrieks and squeals echoed thorough the ventilation system and across the entire house. Her feet kicked back and forth as much as they could in their constricted state. I made several attempts to grab her ankles and hoist her up, but each time I got her up a bit, I would lose my grip and she would slip back in, a tiny bit deeper each time.

A very muffled “GET ME OUT OF HERE!!!” could be heard repeating over and over as I tried in vain to lift her out of the hole.

Suddenly, another brilliant idea formed.

I took the other sheet and tied it around her ankles. I then wrapped the loose end around the pull-up bar my brother had placed in the door frame right outside my sister’s room and yanked with all my might. Slowly, she lifted out of the vent, completely covered in inky soot and sweat. She got to the point that she could get her arms out of the duct and push herself the rest of the way out. Coughing and covered in black dust, she rolled over on the beige covered carpet and caught her breath, the flashlight shining up at the ceiling.

”Did you get it?”

”NO! I couldn’t breathe down there!”

”You’re going to have to go back down there then.”

”NO WAY. I can’t do that again! You go!”

”No, you know I can’t fit… OH MAN, what are we going to do? Our house is going to burn to the ground all because of a dumb Care Bear!”

”The Care Bears aren’t dumb!”

I looked at her. Her soot-covered face was as somber and deadpan as could be. After everything that had happened, she was concerned with defending the honor of these brightly colored bears who wore their emotions on their sleeves.

“Ok, here’s what we are going to do,” I said. I was quite the genius when I was a kid, coming up with great idea after great idea.

”We should go get some garbage bags and pack up all of our stuff and keep it in the closet. That way, if the house catches fire, we can just toss our stuff out of the window quickly and not lose any of it!”

I instructed my sister to stay put while I went and got the garbage bags from the kitchen.

Not knowing how much she heard, I crept in lightly and tested the waters.

”Hey again, mom!”

”Hello, baby. What do you need?” She asked, lightly flipping to the next page in her novel. She hadn't heard any of it - GOOD. I could get on with my mission.

“Just a few garbage bags. We are cleaning our room.”

She looked up at me. “Well, that’s a surprise! I was going to do that today! Thank you sweetie!”

She gave a vibrant and loving smile. "No problem, mommy! I better hurry, Jenny's waiting!"

Mom returned to her book as I slowly opened the kitchen sink cabinet which had almost completely rotted off of its hinges. The musty smell from the leaking sink floated into the air as I reached in and grabbed a handful of garbage bags, then ran almost full speed back to the room my sister and I shared.

“Ok, let’s get this stuff packed fast. You never know when this place will go up!”

We grabbed up every toy, book, record and piece of clothing and placed them into the bags, then placed the bags into the closet. Our room was completely barren as a result. Almost exactly as we placed our last bag into the closet, my mother cheerfully came down the hallway to check on our progress.

”I can’t wait to see this nice clean roo – OH MY GOD!!! JENNY!!! WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO YOUR HAIR!!!!”

She stood there in shock, gazing upon my sister’s new bobbed hairdo and wondering why she was almost completely black. She turned to face Jen’s old room.

”OH MY GOD THE CARPET! And what the hell is that wadded up in the middle of the room? Is that… YOUR HAIR?? and… DUCT TAPE?”

We were terrified to tell her what had happened. Once she found out that the house was certain to erupt into a gigantic ball of fiery destruction, she would give us a whipping – or worse, make us eat beets for dinner. However, we knew that there was no way we could get out of this one without telling her exactly what went on.

She was exasperated. “There is no way that a plastic toy could make the house explode… God, that’s what this is all about? Oh my God… Your hair… Oh my God… ”

She just stood there in tears, asking for the Lord’s attention.

The next day, my mother loaded Jenny and I into the car and made directly for her hairdresser. We sat there for the better part of 3 hours as the woman futilely attempted to bring some sort of order to my sister’s head. She finally told us that the only recourse was to shave it completely off and start all the way over. Again, my mother cried.

She was in love with my sister’s gorgeous locks. In cutting her hair, I had performed the most heinous crime imaginable.

To make it up to her, mom insisted that I spend an entire day on my hands and knees scrubbing the soiled spot out of the carpet (which, incidentally, had just been shampooed not 2 days before this incident in order to better show the house for sale).

It was useless. This spot was now permanently and forever a part of the interior design. She finally just tossed a throw rug over the spot and prayed that any potential buyers wouldn’t lift it up and look underneath.

The toys stayed in the garbage bags until we finally left that house a year later. Even though we trusted our mother, we still feared an impending inferno - these were our toys we were talking about. We took no chances.

Except with furnaces converted to Sarlaac Pits, of course.