A Month of Halloween: Decorating the Lawn

Halloween!          Halloween!          Halloween!

I've been looking forward to this.

Welcome to October! This is my favorite month of the year. The weather is at it's most extremely moderate, and we're on a collision course for Halloween, the holiday season's opening act.

What is it about death that somehow grants our psyches a freedom of unleashing? October is the month where the world is clearly cycling down, and yet as a species we find a new sense of adrenaline by embracing it. The green kingdom that has surrounded us since spring is turning red, yellow and brown and has a certain gallows type beauty all on its own. (Here in the south, we have some years where the leaves don't die from the change in weather, they commit suicide from the summer never ending.) And all of this is in preparation for the big sugar-fest at the end of the month where zombies, devils and the grim reaper itself are extended invitations into our homes.

Halloween was a big deal for my family when I was growing up. Half of my trick-or-treating years were spent sick and under lock and key in attempts to protect my fragile lungs (courtesy of the pneumonia I had contracted as an infant). For the other half I was dressed as a clown, and one year as a ghost. In my teens, like most pleasures, it stopped mattering to me, but I rediscovered the joys of Halloween in college when the TKEs threw their graveyard parties (the only Greek functions I ever went to). I went as my religion professor, Waldo, and Wednesday Addams.

Fun fact about Wednesday: I had to borrow a little black dress from my friend Victoria. Sometime after that Halloween Addams Family Values hit the theaters and I went to it with my friends Johnathan, Alicia and Maggie dressed as Gomez, Morticia, and Cousin Itt respectively, with me as Wednesday again. By that point, Victoria told me I was using her dress more than she was and she let me keep it. Thank you sweetie! I dug it out again to go to my first viewing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

After college, I moved back home and stayed there for about six years. One autumn this damned banana spider (yilck) made its home on the left side of our porch, and my ex-flower-child mother would let us remove it from the mortal world. So it became necessary to move the trick-or-treating project away from the door and into the yard to dissuade the stupid neighborhood kids from sticking their hands in a f**king spiderweb. And you know what? Halloween was a lot more fun that year. None of the neighbors on my street really talked to each other (or maybe they just didn't talk to us) but on Halloween night the place became a social setting. Kind of special for an introvert. Each subsequent year, our front lawn became progressively more elaborate. We had tombstones, skeletons relaxing on a picnic blanket, a stake to burn volunteers on, and the banana spider showed up again one year. Do those things migrate or something?

But my best moment, which I wasn't present for, was this one year I couldn't find a suitable candle for the jack-o-lantern. Somehow, carving the pumpkin had become my job and I did my passable best, but I couldn't find one of those short stubby candles. The only ones available were the long candelabra types, you know, that don't stand up on their own. I figured I could make it work if I just had a disposable base, and brilliantly the only thing I could find was the plastic top off of an old spray bottle. The candle was still a little too thin for the inside circle, so I stuffed it with tissue paper. There. Perfect. I don't know why I dropped out of the Boy Scouts (actually I do, I hated it).

So the night went on, the kids became more sporadic, our candy bowl became emptier and yours truly wanted to see how the rest of the neighborhood had been decorated. Oh, and the lit candle inside the pumpkin got shorter. My mom, in full witch garb, had taken over the candy distribution role and a little boy (who was brave enough to be out by himself) was in the process of having his bag topped off, when the flame on the candle touched the tissue paper, igniting the plastic top and blowing out the bottom of the jack-o-lantern. He stared in shock at the jump scare, looked at my witch-mom and said "How did you get it to do that?"

So that brings me to the point in my blog where I mention my blog (twice in fact). I couldn't narrow my list down to four, so I've decided instead to go all out. All this month you can expect a new entry every couple of days. I've got some albums to talk about, favorite movies, another one of my puzzle-based stories that nobody likes, and hopefully a few fictional pieces; all centered around the Halloween theme (unless my laptop dies on me again like last year).

So welcome to my virtual home. Hang out, have some punch, and don't go anywhere, because come Saturday we're going to pretend to delve into a midnight showing of THE iconic Halloween film. You bring the DVD, I'll bring the blog. Here's a hint: it's not Halloween.