Spookable

Happy Halloween, Internet!

Because procrastination seems to be my number one trait, I managed to save 85% of my Halloween decorating until today. It’s not that I didn’t have the pumpkins, or the cheesecloth, or an idea of how I wanted to put them all together… I just hadn’t. Yet. Until this morning, when I gutted and carved 11 pumpkins in 2 hours, hung my coffee stained spooky cheesecloth up as curtains on the front windows, made final adjustments to spider webbing outside, and hung up drippy black goo in my hallway where I’ll be greeting all those darling kids and throwing handfuls of candy into their sacks. Thank GOD because I have got the worst sugar hangover in history. Can I help it that Halloween coincided with my time of the month so perfectly? But seriously, my head, it hurts from all the sugar lovin.

I even managed to call my dad to remind him why I don’t watch scary movies anymore. Because I was scarred by my childhood! *ahem* He swears it was mom all along. To know why I’m afraid of the dark is to know my father. Flashback 26 years ago, my father decided to buy an old farm house that was over 100 years old and half burnt to the ground (he had a soft spot for fixer-uppers). Every weekend for 3 years my family would drive from Rochester to Mt. Morris to rebuild this old house, which incidentally, was also equiped with four barns, a milk house, a chicken coup, and an outhouse. It was every body’s dream come true (har har). The fun thing about driving 60 odd miles to this broken down house was we would have the most extraordinary bonfires all weekend long (probably because it was the only way we could see, not having electricity and all).

My dad is a showman. He loves to make elaborate gestures and have a lot of fun in the process (fun always seemed to involve some sort of explosive now that I recall). One of dad’s favorite things to do for the bonfire was to top it with a bit of used oil left over from his oil changes, thus making the flames leap and dance to at least 4 times it’s original size. Clearly, dad wasn’t a stickler for the environment or for safety.

Dad’s oil reserves were kept in one of the spooky barns not to far from our set up. His favorite joke to play would be to go into pitch black barn and start screaming that something had a hold of him. “SG! SG! Help!!! It’s got me! It’s got me! Hellllllp!” Although I was only five at the time, I was fearless and willing to take on whatever it was that my burly father couldn’t handle. Despite all of the warnings from the rest of the family I rushed into the barn to save him only to have him jump out of the darkness, grab me by the shoulders, and roar in my ear. At which point I hauled ass back to my mom and promptly started to cry. This went on every weekend for nearly two years (I’m never claimed I was a bright child). This is the main reason why I’m so terrified of the dark. To this day, Dad still thinks it’s the funniest thing he’s ever done.

Despite my distaste for the dark, I still love Halloween. It’s one of the only days of the year that I can tolerate the scary things of the night. I love making the house all creepy, the costumes, and of course the candy. I draw the line on gore though. I just don’t think it’s necessary for something to be scary.

 Of course, that’s not to say I like scary movies in the least. I’ll give you one guess why I can’t tolerate those either…