my get rich quick scheme

My daughter is getting paid to scare people. Four nights a week, she is getting to run around yelling at people with total impunity, make horrible faces at them, create a screeching, howling racket, and generally terrify the public. And they pay her. I am sensing a serious business opportunity here.

Because, great as this is for her, I am thinking it could offer an even greater adventure in entrepreneurship for me. Every day, between the various committees on which I serve, customer service reps with whom I deal, teenagers with whom I live, drivers with whom I share the road, and other miscellaneous people with whom I share the planet, I want to scream at at least a dozen or so of them. But, being a mild-mannered nice person, I don't. I know I am not alone in this.

I know, because I know I am not the only woman on the planet of the age when hormones start clouding our better judgment of whether or not homicide is still a poor call at all times and situations. I know because of the email I received asking how many perimenopausal women it took to change a light bulb that made me laugh for an hour. (And still does.)

So here is my thought. What if I opened a haunted house like the one in which my daughter currently works and, instead of paying young actors to work there, I charged mid-life women to work there? Would I not be making double the money as well as benefiting society by giving ladies everywhere a healthy chance to vent?

Let's be honest, how many of you would lay down good money to be the one who got to chase around someone with an ax, howling like a banshee, just pretending it was that annoying person at the grocery store who had parked her cart smack in the center of the aisle, ignored your pointed hints to move it over, stared dazedly at the cereal racks as if the sugar-coated O's were going to levitate into her cart, and then gotten in front of you in the express lane with 46 items?

Who would not give cold cash to scare the daylights out of anyone you could pretend was the DMV customer service rep who told you, “Yes, I know we have your social security number wrong in our system and it's our fault. But I still can't renew your license or fix it, because it's in our records permanently that way and we're the government.”

What do you think, ladies? I think I'm on to something.