Halloween Wrap Up

Originally written 11/8/7

Something odd is going on. No, not that I’m writing the Halloween wrap up on November 8. It’s that so far this week, I’ve had a record number of hits. Far more than if all my Friends visited 14 times. (Yes, I used a calculator) So we’re getting a bunch of lurkers, which is cool. And this spike has given me some inspiration to crank out some new material. Not to mention, if I don’t do this Hween rap now, it might not get out till after Tgiving. Too much free time is funny that way.

Flashback to mischief night. It was about 8, and no one TP’d our tree yet. Every year, it’s the kids (and a few adults) from across the street that hit a few houses. It’s all cool, we know the kids, and look forward to their handiwork every year. Every year I say I am going to hide on the side of the house and run out and scare them. With no damage yet, I make the traditional trek downstairs to watch the Great Pumpkin. 8:30 I come up and we’ve been hit! Goddamn it! They got us good. We see them moving down the street, hitting friendly houses, trees, cars, etc. They brought their A-game this year. They even tied TP so it went from a car to a pole on the other side of the street. It looked like a finish line at a marathon. They did ace work wrapping a roll around cross wires, so it all dangled in the street. It was eerie, yet calming at the same time.

Hween morning. I usually don’t set up the yard before Hween. With Tara being a teacher, I am always afraid some of her kids might vengefully trash anything I put out. Or just some drunken ass might be stumbling down the street and get some ideas. These days, I’m usually that late night drunk stumbling home, looking to fight bushes that look at me funny. It’s kinda like Extreme Makeover. I have less than one day to turn this typical front yard into a scary grave yard.

I’m out there first thing cleaning up dog poo. You always have to clean up the dog poo. Then I start dragging out everything I have. I have no preconceived idea of where stuff is going to go. I dragged the Sirius out. They did some pretty cool stuff for Hween. All day, one channel was playing sound effects. The other one had all the old radio plays from back in the day; the original Dracula, Frankenstein, etc. it was actually pretty cool to listen to.

I go about setting up the yard; gravestones, motion activated mummy whose eyes lit up and talked, new dummy, new lighted coffin that opens and closes, a new ghoul dummy. I also got this 12 foot ‘sinister reaper’ (that’s what it says on the box, eh). The 12 foot guy I tie to the gutter so it drapes the porch where the candy will be. I lay out the yard to pretty much where it will look good in the dark. Now comes the real challenge; wiring the thing. It looks like I gutted R2D2 & C3PO with all these wires, cords, and surge protectors. That’s really the most challenging part. And making sure the cords are relatively out of the way, so the candy stealing snots don’t hurt themselves absconding with my goddamn candy.
So the scene is set. Gravestones, 1 that lights up, and one with a flaming cauldron light in front of it. A cross draped in the afore mentioned TP. A skeleton on a coffin with a strobe on it. Aw, hell, I’ll just post pics of what it looked like.

One thing I learned last year is that the kids were onto my costume. Last year, on the day after, I went out and picked up a shoulder pads that were black and had spikes and skulls on them. I got a bitchin’ new mask. It was a green devil. Orange eyes, long horns, and I had green monster gloves on as well. (There’s also a pic of that, but I didn’t use a flash so it didn’t come out.) Tara just dressed up in a black hooded robe. It was her job to send the kids up, and tip me off if they were too young to scare. We had the same basic set up. She would greet them at the driveway, and send them up the drive to go up to the porch where the candy was. The porch was blacklit and had a smoke machine. I was standing between the mummy and a new mannequin (eyes light up, skull face, flowing robe that I put sneakers beneath so the kids couldn’t see the supports. It’s the little touches.) So as the kids walked up the driveway, there were three dummies right in front of them. If they were old enough, I would scare them. If they were too young, I would just let them go up, get the candy and leave. Simple enough. There’s not really a lot of places to hide, so you have to find new ways to hide “in plain sight”.

Hween was just about to start. I was running around the yard, making sure everything was up and running. And it happens. Again. It’s just about dark. It is clear that my house is the only one on the block doing any sort of presentation. You drive by and see strobes, blacklights, coffins, sounds, etc. And out of nowhere this fucking big black truck appears like a ghoul in the night. Wanna guess where it parks? Right. Right in front of the only house on the street doing any sort of presentation. Soccer mom pops out and takes a stroller out of the back. I am looking at her like she has to be kidding. Seriously, bitch, open your Goddamned eyes and cut me a fucking break. Park the next house down. Or up. Just not in front of my house. My view goes from checking everything to shooting her evil glances as she unloads her kid. I am fuming now. She takes turns looking at her truck, my yard and getting the kid out. After she unloads everything she needs, she starts to wheel away her pumpkin. She looks back at me and says “Is this OK?” I choked. I should have said something like “It’s too late now.” Or “it’s OK if you want to ruin my Halloween, dipshit.” But I just mumble “No, it’s OK” with an attitude. I then proceed to watch her walk down about 5 houses. Where there were plenty of parking spaces. But, no, she has to come all the way down here to piss in my candy corn. Lesson learned; next year do something to either prohibit cars from parking there, or park our cars there, then move them to the backyard when we’re ready to start.

Second lesson learned; Goddamn, this devil mask is fucking hot. It wraps all the way around my head. It even has a neck piece that has to be tucked down, beneath the shoulder pads. I can’t do it on my own, Tara has to help me. The vision is OK. The ear holes don’t quite line up to mine, so it’s a bit hard to hear. I put the green rubber gloves on, and it feels like I am totally sealed in like Tupperwear.

So we go out and it’s showtime. Tara goes down to the bottom of the driveway. I take my place between the mummy and new dummy. Kids start coming down the street and to our house. Tara takes a bowl of candy down with her. In retrospect, this is a bit of a mistake. See, she’s too kind hearted. She will stop halfway down the street if she sees an elderly trying to cross. Me? Fuck it, grandma, you’re waiting, where the hell do you have to go anyway? It’s Hween, and I want to scare as many kids as possible. It’s my holiday, and it lasts about 3 hours, so I gotta make every minute count.

Tara will direct the kids to go down the driveway. At this point, it’s dark, and I only have clear vision through 1 eye. The kids are a bit wary. I start to hold my breath so my unemployed beer belly doesn’t give me away. Holding your breath with a hot rubber mask is not an easy task. I can see their eyes moving from the mummy to me to the dummy. The kids know something is going to get them. I wait as long as possible to move and scream. “BOO!” Kids have a good little scare. Fine, you’ve earned it, no go get a miniscule Milky Way or whatever.

This is the fun time. The earliest kids are the easiest ones to scare. Some kids have been coming here for years so “we know something is going to jump out at us” as one kid told me. The kids start to come in waves. So Tara goes across the street to talk to the neighbors. I’m kinda stuck since I can’t hide. I pretty much have to just stand around. You know, like the UNI reps used to do (Hi-O!). Kids come in waves. I’m a bit back from the street, and my vision is not great, so I pretty much can’t move. I have to wait minutes and minutes to just try to scare these kids. And there’s Tar, freely chatting away, while I’m sweating my ass off. Why do I like this holiday so much?

It’s going good. I get some good scares in. We’re now getting to the point of the night where the kids are a bit older and a bit harder to scare. That is unless there are girls in the group. It doesn’t matter how old the girls are, most of them are wussies, especially in a group. There’s always the one asshole in the group that really plays into her being scared. They will psyche the girls out. I BOO and they scream. This never gets old. The guys laugh, I laugh, we all move on. It’s starting to thin out now. The groups are coming by fewer and fewer. I’m an addict, I always need to get that last hit in. Tara starts to work against me. If kids are too scared to come up and get the candy, she will give them candy from her bowl. So there’s no penalty if the kid is too scared to come up and get the loot. How is Junior supposed to learn? In a way, what I am doing is a service. The wussy ones will take the easy candy and move on. I’m getting frustrated and it’s getting late. I know time is running out. I need another hit.

Down the street come 4 young girls dressed as 50 dancers/bobbysoxers. I can see they are wary of coming to my house. They get candy from a neighbor. The cross the street halfway, kinda look. I can see they want to come in. They may not know that, but I know that, damnit. They come a few steps closer, and then move a few steps back. Why must they tease me? In the end, Tara betrays me and gives them candy. No way, not on my watch. I watch them give the yard one last look, then move along. It’s time to play.

The girls are across the street. I hide behind my neighbors care. I make sure to hide as good as possible since the horns are higher than my head. There’s no traffic, I slink across the street. I am mere feet away from them now. They are distracted by getting more easy candy. I am now inches away as the girls start to turn around. “BOOO!”

“WWAAAAAHHH!”

I get all of them. And by get, I mean a 36 year old dressed up as a devil has just successfully made 4 young girls cry. One runs behind her mother. The mom tells me to take my mask off. I tell her I can’t. She asks again, and I tell her I can’t because it’s tucked under my shoulder pads. She huffs and walks off. I guess she wanted me to take the mask off….because….well…..you know…..she wanted to……Shout at the Devil.

I go back to the pack of neighbors, feeling a bit of glee along with pangs of guilt. As I return, they tell me that apparently the mom saw me coming and was pleading for me to not scare her kids. Since I couldn’t hear, I just went right ahead and scared ‘em. I felt bad because I did hear the youngest girl still crying as she went down the street. A few minutes later, a neighbor who was walking up the street said the mom was still bitching about me all the way down the street. And I did feel bad. It seems every year, I go a bit too far in one case. Here’s this poor girl on Hween, and I probably just gave her nightmares. While I was watching Ghost Hunters all night, she was shaking and quivering in her bed, her mom comforting her and cursing me out.

The kids dried up. It was almost 9. Time to break things down. Hween was over. My night was done. We took down a bunch of stuff, but there was still more stuff to break down the next day. It’s always sad taking that stuff down. Hween is funny that way. Unlike Xmas, generally when it’s over, boom it’s over. The next few days when I took Bauer for a walk, it was sad to see Hween decorations disappearing, lights no longer on, etc. What of the true things I hate about Hween being over is its suddenly full speed ahead to fucking Xmas. But it also marks the beginning of the Hallowmas Season. Are you one of the newbies that is not familiar with this also greatest of holiday seasons? Well, expect a lot of Hallowmas coverage here in the next few weeks, as we lead up to the Second Ever Official Hallowmas Party 2007.

So it’s goodbye Halloween, hello Hallowmas Season. Happy Hallowmas to you and yours.

By the way, props to Drew for crediting for me in his blog for the whole “slutting up” theory of Halloween.