Halloween, like all holidays, is not as busy around my house as it used to be. But business is picking up......my grandkids are getting old enough to come over now. Colin and Megan live close so i get to see them in their cartoon characters. Last year they were Scooby-Do and a purple Care Bear.
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Also last year i got to see my Connecticut grandson, Illeas, before Halloween, but he was still happy to pose in his Dragon costume.
i got a kick out of this Frankenstein Hand that moved across the table, but Illeas wasn't too sure it was safe.
Even the dogs dressed up last year.
My Tommy seems much happier about this holiday than Lara's Maddy. Looks like she thinks she may have to make an emergency call to the ASPCA.
Here's some memories i wrote about a couple of years ago.
Remember when there were no such things as store-bought costumes??? You were a hobo, or ghost, or wore your mother’s clothes….that was about it. But nobody worried about razors in apples then either.
The Halloween that will always stand out in my mind is the year i begged and begged my mother to let me wear her dangly rhinestone earrings with one of her fancier dresses and high heels (now these were her very nicest earrings, mind you) and she refused. But being the persistent only-child i was, i bugged her until she relented.
Of course, i lost one of them somewhere along my route. I just hated to go home that night. Not that i was afraid i would be punished, because i knew i wouldn’t be. But because i knew how hurt she would be….to lose that favorite earring…and that i had been so careless after i had promised and promised how careful i would be. Nothing hurts a child like that “mother guilt thing” does it? I use it on my kids all the time now..
The only other Halloween i really remember was the last one. My girlfriend and i must have been thirteen or fourteen….still young enough to want to get as much candy as we could (girls didn’t grow up so quickly then, obviously)….but aware enough of our age and height to be a little self-conscious. I remember we had a great time and were amassing great quantities of calories when we went to the last house we ever went to (these momentous occasions need to be documented, yaknow). The woman gave us candy, but guess she just couldn’t help herself from ruining our evening, “Aren’t you girls a little old for this?”
Now i wonder what would prompt her to say that to two young girls. She ruined this holiday for us forever. Maybe she had had a bad day herself, maybe she was just tired from answering the door bell, maybe she was just a frustrated old bitch. I’m sure she had problems of her own (all adults do). But my girlfriend and i didn’t understand that. We only knew we had been slapped in the face. The candy really didn’t even taste too good that night. We felt ashamed that we had been going door to door and embarassing ourselves and didn’t even realize it. Unfortunately, innocence ends so much sooner these days. days.
When my kids were little we lived in a great neighborhood and I made all their costumes. The best was the robot - two cardboard boxes spray painted silver with wire antennae on top. By that time, i always accompanied them on their forages(maybe even stole a snickers bar once in a while when they weren’t looking). Anyway, the neighbors would always invite us all in and they would oooooh and aaaah over their costumes and the kids would just preen with pride.
What memories! Now all the kids go from store to store at the mall. No meeting neighbor kids to go from door to door. No running up the street in the dark, yelling and shouting maybe even howling to the sky just for the fun of it. No discussions of which neighbors gave the best treats and which were so stingy you might as well skip their house or which house to skip because there were rumors that they didn't like kids there.....and besides they never left their porch light on anyway. Everything has changed, but then it always does, doesn't it.
But still…….i always wonder who found that rhinestone earring and what they did with it.
It’s just me, geni
p.s. sorry about the Christmas music. It is much too much hard work to change it and besides the stores all have Christmas stuff everywhere....why not my music??
