Spooky

Forgive me, reader, for the spooky image that just assaulted your eyes. Surely you gasped. Spilled your cup of coffee, perhaps. Let out a squeal of terror.

It cannot be helped. We are deep into October and Halloween looms. Well, maybe it loomed. I can’t be sure of the tense. I always write these blogs a few weeks out. Like to stay ahead of the game. What games? All games. And this spooky blog is one of the sillier games I play. Although most people, so far as I can tell, come up with silly games to play. People are very strange creatures.

I’m sure I wrote about this before, maybe even last year, but one of my favorite Halloween memories is when I shared a PowerPoint about writing to my high school students. It was close to Halloween and I promised them the most gruesome, scary picture they’d ever seen at the end if they managed to pay attention to the presentation. They were captivated. I kept promising an inappropriate, horrible image. At the end of the PowerPoint, after taking copious notes about writing a thesis statement, I asked if they were ready to be assaulted by something truly terrifying.

“Yes!” They shouted.

I advanced the slideshow and my students saw a smiling jack-o-lantern that looked very much like the picture above.

“BOO!!!” I screamed. And then I laughed. And laughed some more.

***

As I mentioned, I’m penning this spooky blog before the arrival of Halloween. My two boys are eager to wander our neighborhood in search of candy. Our new neighborhood in Iowa City goes all out for Halloween. Decorations and giant-sized candy bars. Puts our quiet, rural neighborhood in Pennsylvania to shame.

Samson is going to be a pumpkin. Again, talk about spooky. Solomon, my math wizard, is going to be a calculator. My dutiful wife Katie created the costume using construction paper, poster board, and string. It’s really something.

Katie has cat ears, so she’ll probably be a cat. Me? I’ll go as a crotchety 43-year-old man. It’s a character I’m somewhat familiar with.

Many moons ago, I dressed up as the right honorable Mitch McConnell for an improv show in Pennsylvania. My impersonation was brilliant. My mutterings about Democratic spending were overcome with sporadic and maniacal bits of laughter. Clearly, were I to reprise the role, I’d pause mid-sentence and stare off in the distance, as though I were possessed by a demon from the nether-region. Sadly, the wig and classes that made the look are somewhere in Pennsylvania. We have a costume party coming up at one of Solomon’s friends house. I thought about ordering another pair of circular glasses and another white wig. The thought never became action. So crotchety 43-year-old man it is.

Here’s a thought that did spur some action. I ordered two pair of spider costumes for cats. One for Theo and one for Meowalicious. They haven’t tried them on yet.

“That’s a waste of money, Dad,” Samson told me.

Most things, when you get down to it, are a waste of money. Again, people play silly games.

***

My other favorite Halloween memory comes from when I lived in Northeast Minneapolis. It was my first Halloween in my house and I forgot to buy candy. I had carved a pumpkin with Katie at a family event a few weeks before. It was resting on my steps. It occurred to me, as it started to get dark, that I didn’t want to give children the signal that my house was open for business. So I walked outside, grabbed the pumpkin, and walked to the garbage can near the street. I didn’t notice a little girl and her mother sneak up behind me.

“Trick-or-treat!” the eager child yelled at me with a big smile.

I was trapped. I had no candy. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to say. So I did what any 27-year-old man would do. I tossed the pumpkin in the trash, ran up my steps without a word, and slammed the door in the kids face.

Happy Halloween, I guess.