Friday, November 02, 2007

Unhappy Halloween


I hope yours was better than mine, or at least somewhat saner. See that Jack-o-lantern? That's pretty much the way I looked by the end of the evening.

During my drive home from work my darling husband and I did the “who’s going to make dinner negotiations,” on our cell phones and decided (without her knowledge) the 21-year-old daughter would cook. He won, ahem--I mean lost, the coin toss and ended up having to call her to give her that information.

By the time I got home, she was nearly finished making tacos. I would have loved something a bit more substantial, but hey, I requested a meal, and technically tacos is a meal. Of sorts.

I’ve been in the writing groove, so I was eager to get back to my wip—except nobody wanted to answer the doorbell, which rang repeatedly. So, that fell on me. And boy did that baby ring. From the amount of candy we gave out, we figured we had more than 120 kids come to the door.

Let me tell you, 99% of our trick or treaters were cute, lovely, polite kids. Our neighbors came by with their little boy dressed as a construction worker. Aww, he was so cute. They happened to mention that they left a bowl of candy on their porch with a sign that said, “Take One.” I smiled and thought, how naïve.

I was in the kitchen once when the bell rang. It takes me about 8 seconds to walk to the door. Before I arrived, the kids were pounding on the door and windows, screaming for someone to give them candy. Boy was I steamed. I opened the door fully intending to give them a short lesson in manners. Before I could speak they started screaming the Trick or Treat song at me. The whole thing took my breath away, especially since this was a group of about a half dozen junior high-age girls. Talk about pack mentality. I bet each one of those girls individually is charming, but as a group they were nearly frightening. And then my neighbors walked by again and told me that they were across the street and saw that group of girls take the entire bowl of candy. Nice girls.

Between answering the door and trying to calm the whining dog, I somehow managed to write 900+ words. Yeah!! But as we began to run out of candy, I panicked. My solution—to send my husband to the store for more candy. Good plan. He returned with sushi. That made me laugh. Oh, he also had some candy.

The neighbors rang the bell again. It seems someone took the bowl that had held their candy—their glass bowl—and broke it at the end of my driveway! As a writer, I had an eerie sense of premonition when they told me their candy distribution was on the honor system. Talk about foreshadowing.

Toward the end of the night I answered to the door again. I looked at the person standing on my doorstep and said, “Wow. You’ve got the best costume of the night. Would you like to come in?”

Hearing that, my husband ventured to the foyer out of curiosity. (I’m not the type of girl to invite random people into my home.) It was a police officer. No, a real police officer.

Talk about a crazy night! It seems my husband witness a federal crime, and the officer came to get a statement. Before you start imagining all kinds of crazy things, my husband spotted someone drilling through the keyholes at our community mailboxes.

So, that was my Halloween. Crazy. Busy. Bizarre. How was yours?

3 comments:

Kay Day said...

Well, by comparison it was downright dull. And very, very cold. We had only about a dozen bell-ringers. And we encountered two houses with bowls of candy and signs. They were still in one piece and still had candy in them at 8:30.

Jenny said...

How was our Halloween? Much saner than that! Sorry about yours.

Heather said...

that is bizarre.
but sushi is always good.
we didn't have door-ringers, but those we had my husband answered (well, all but 1). i wasn't feeling well, and though i love seeing the costumes, couldn't get to the door.
but as to those girls--i hope all that candy catches up to them!