I believe that Fall is probably my favorite time of year.
Trees explode in brilliant color offering an indescribable display from Mother Nature. Fall is also a busy season; a season for reaping the fruits of hard labor at the end of a long growing season. The waning days of Fall signals the promise of a winter that’s surely to blow in as a frigid demon in the wind.
The confusion as to which direction to set the clocks when the time change occurs was quite amusing as it relates to my grandfather trying to figure out how to adjust the VCR and microwave clocks.
And then, there's the centerpiece of Fall...Halloween. The excitement of joining friends and neighbors for festivities makes me feel like a kid again. I often, fondly reminisce about my childhood as I, and the other neighborhood kids, excitedly darted through the streets, vying for the biggest and best treats.
We’d beat one another with baseball bats, sticks or push the dorky kid into oncoming traffic so there would be more candy for the rest of us. It appeared as though we were destitute crack addicts who were just released from jail.
There’s something quite intoxicating about the aroma of busted pumpkins on the street and the mystical glaze of eggs slowly trickling down the facade of a house in the light of a silver moon as toilet paper wistfully dances from tree branches in the soft, crisp Fall breeze
Speaking of intoxicated, I also remember our creepy neighbor (Mr. Ethridge) who got fired from his job as an air traffic controller.
He used to tell us he needed to test the flame retardancy of our costumes by trying to light us on fire with a Zippo lighter. Good times indeed! Mr. Ethridge always wore loose-fitting gym shorts with pockets and a white t-shirt.
I believe he ended up in jail for a long time. It had something to do with an ice cream cake party for the kids, a Peter Pan costume and an inflatable jumping moonwalk.
Trees explode in brilliant color offering an indescribable display from Mother Nature. Fall is also a busy season; a season for reaping the fruits of hard labor at the end of a long growing season. The waning days of Fall signals the promise of a winter that’s surely to blow in as a frigid demon in the wind.
The confusion as to which direction to set the clocks when the time change occurs was quite amusing as it relates to my grandfather trying to figure out how to adjust the VCR and microwave clocks.
And then, there's the centerpiece of Fall...Halloween. The excitement of joining friends and neighbors for festivities makes me feel like a kid again. I often, fondly reminisce about my childhood as I, and the other neighborhood kids, excitedly darted through the streets, vying for the biggest and best treats.
We’d beat one another with baseball bats, sticks or push the dorky kid into oncoming traffic so there would be more candy for the rest of us. It appeared as though we were destitute crack addicts who were just released from jail.
There’s something quite intoxicating about the aroma of busted pumpkins on the street and the mystical glaze of eggs slowly trickling down the facade of a house in the light of a silver moon as toilet paper wistfully dances from tree branches in the soft, crisp Fall breeze
Speaking of intoxicated, I also remember our creepy neighbor (Mr. Ethridge) who got fired from his job as an air traffic controller.
He used to tell us he needed to test the flame retardancy of our costumes by trying to light us on fire with a Zippo lighter. Good times indeed! Mr. Ethridge always wore loose-fitting gym shorts with pockets and a white t-shirt.
I believe he ended up in jail for a long time. It had something to do with an ice cream cake party for the kids, a Peter Pan costume and an inflatable jumping moonwalk.
I have friends who throw some amazing Halloween parties. They call themselves hosts, I call them enablers.
There’s nothing quite as amusing as observing an overly served guest who’s tipped one too many at the open bar after devouring about a dozen of those orange-iced Halloween cookies fashioned after pumpkins.
I’ve never seen such a beautiful shade of orange purge from a human body…and all over the couch, carpet, marble foyer and front porch. Talk about scary.
I only dress up for Mardi Gras events these days, opting to dress normally for Halloween. Inevitably, there’s always one person who comes to the party wearing a 5-thousand dollar costume which makes them appear as though they’re competing for an Oscar in the “Best Costume” category.
These are the same folks who drunkenly slosh their drink all over the floor (at 7pm), stumbling over the team of midgets which they’ve hired to dress as demons. As they place their rented smoke machine aside (also a costume accessory) they cleverly, and loudly, ask:
“Hey, what are YOU supposed to be dressed as?”
I usually inform these people that I’m dressed as the person who would like for them to go away.
I once worked with a woman who dressed in a microscopic mini skirt, low cut top, heels and a ton of makeup on Halloween. I complimented her on the “call-girl” costume…until she informed me that she was actually NOT in costume and that she had a date later. I hope they had fun.
While Halloween is supposed to be scary, it’s a fun kind of scary.
The thrill which one experiences as they scan the kid’s candy through an x-ray machine, the excitement of having bio-lab analysts take samples to ensure that the treats are safe, printing out a neighborhood map so that registered “sex-offender” houses might be avoided screams of fun and lasting memories if you ask me!
Admittedly, I don’t scare too easily-- with the exception of a friend who announced to me recently that he enjoys watching "The Real Housewives."
My neighbor makes it easy on herself and simply dresses as a witch each year. It's helpful that she sort of looks like a witch actually.
Witches/wicked female characters don’t really scare me. Don’t get me wrong, there are still authentic portrayals of wicked women who DO scare me:
That babysitter chick from "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle", Kathy Bates in "Misery", Perez Hilton, my 6th grade teacher, Ms. Watson, Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, my ex-girlfriend…the list goes on.
I blame Bewitched for removing the stigma associated with witches. As a kid, I had a major crush on Samantha. My weird uncle Leonard had a crush on the little girl, Tabitha.
He suddenly disappeared when I was about 10. My dad said he had to go away for a while, so I didn't ask.
Now that I think about it, where DID that money supposedly come from when Samantha twitched her nose? Most importantly…was Paul Lynde (Uncle Arthur) really gay??
Anyway, you can’t just print and introduce piles of brand new money into the economy without raising the value of whatever monetary source which backs it. That would create inflation, devalue the dollar, domestically and internationally and send the stock market reeling. Uh, wait a second...that sounds eerily familiar.
Scary indeed
My friend Todd frightened me recently; actually his wife Melissa scared me more.
Melissa planned to spend the night with her girlfriends across the lake so that Todd could finish some sort of remodeling project on his bathroom. Somehow Todd thought it to be a good idea to enlist MY assistance.
I did what any good handy-man’s assistant would do, in that I didn’t know what purpose ANY tool in his utility box served. I also accidentally cut myself on a door jamb, stepped on the cat and I glued my left hand to the tile on the vanity. So, I dragged Todd down the street to a pub, hoping that straight whiskey would make the tile square fall off my hand.
It didn't work, but I felt better about things...and I had my own tile coaster for the drink.
Melissa, however, decided that she would come back home that evening in order to get an early start on errands the next day.
Imagine how surprised Todd and I were to find Melissa sitting in the living room, glaring at us as we stumbled through the door singing "When the Saints Go Marching In." I believe Todd was wearing somebody's shirt on his head and he went to the bathroom off his front porch. (I also accidentally glued the toilet seat shut)
Melissa seems to become agitated when Todd hangs out with me…which is precisely why I won’t eat ANYTHING that she cooks for me unless I've monitored her every move as she prepares it.
As I recall, Todd slept on the couch that evening while I, being the guest, stayed in the guest bedroom with a chair firmly planted under the doorknob. **
** I've amended my list of wicked/scary women to include Melissa.
Todd had to drag out a stack of sheets and blankets in order to make the guest bed and he asked me to grab the fitted sheet from the drawer.
The fitted sheet, apparently, is the thing with elastic corners on it-- kind of like the waist line of those blue jeans that old people wear.
As a general observation, wrapping a fitted sheet over a mattress after five beers and four shots is comparable to advanced geometry class at MIT.
I strongly believe that installing a fitted sheet should be an exercise employed by police officers at a DUI checkpoint. When you secure one corner and the other corner pops off…BAM! The cop hits you with a taser and takes you straight to jail.
Somehow, Todd was able to properly make this bed, complete with all 400 pillows that his wife insists upon having-- which I believe makes him a “functional alcoholic”...who lives with an angry pillow hoarder. I did absolutely nothing worthwhile to assist but I DID step on the cat again.
Now that I think about it, the scariest part of the evening was when I learned that Todd knew all about fitted sheets, thread counts and where ALL of the pillows should be arranged.
There are some things guys just don’t discuss over beer and shooting pool.
As I think more about it, I suppose that I DO scare easily in some areas-- medical situations being a prime example. Actually medical situations don’t scare me as much as a visit to the doctor’s office, which I had to recently do.
It’s not a major hang-up-- I simply have a mild aversion to doctor visits, in that, I’m terrified of:
All doctors
Nurses
Anesthesiologists
Nurse’s assistants
The receptionist at the front desk
The doctor’s office parking lot
The front door to the doctor’s office
The actual title "Doctor"
Those who play doctors or any medical personnel in TV and film
The car which is transporting me to the doctor’s office
Thermometers
Doogie Howser
CNN’s Nancy Grace**
**Has nothing to do with doctors, but still scares me
The doc recently placed me on a brief trial of antibiotics which listed the following on the warning label:
“Contact your doctor immediately if you experience anxiety, mood swings or suicidal thoughts”
Antibiotics which make you want to die. Talk about a great method for curing an infection!
I’m a bit embarrassed to admit this, but I’m truly afraid of haunted houses. Not the Amityville or Poltergeist-type houses where the ghost tortures you, your family, your pets, unsuspecting African-American house guests or some priest who stops by to save the day.
Why is it that teens or unsuspecting house guests are usually the first to be murdered in the movies? Specifically, the ones who slip off into the nearby forest for sexual escapades just prior to being decapitated by a flying wagon wheel or a harpoon (which just happens to be laying around under some leaves in the forest.)
I’m afraid of the “staged” haunted houses and it goes back to when I was age six. My mom (pronounced: Mommy) took me to a haunted house where one of the “actors” accidentally hit me with his pointed devil’s tail. It cut my face pretty badly, therefore, I've held a deep fear ever since.
When I was 18, me and some of my buddies volunteered to be actors in the local Jaycees haunted house. I figured this might help me to better conquer my haunted house fear.
Along with my buddies Matt and Shane, I was assigned to the bloody laboratory of death scene. There was a headless mannequin, splattered with blood, and our job was to chop away at the body with our blood drenched hatchets.
Behaving with the level of maturity that one might expect from three 18-year olds, we swiped some dark, curly hair from one of the other costumes in the prop-room and then duct-taped it to the mannequin’s crotch. We then proceeded to simulate sex acts with the headless body (and the severed head). I've never laughed so hard in my life.
I’m not sure if you can picture that scene, but suffice it to say that no one seemed terrified of our little laboratory. With the exception of our parents and the adult supervisors.
I’m pretty sure that cold, harsh reality set in on the adults as they came to grips with the fact that Matt, Shane and I represented the future of our great society. So, I suppose that our scene in the haunted house WAS scary after all.
All of this reminiscing while writing this piece has actually put me into a more festive mood this Halloween. I believe, for the first time since I was a kid, I WILL dress up this year. Nothing too elaborate though.
copyright Pontchartrain Press 2010
copyright Pontchartrain Press 2010
