What Now

OK, so Halloween.

We spent the evening with Mr. Lee so that we could finally know what real, hardcore, trick or treating is like. I didn't wear a costume, much to my chagrin, because I believe that my fondness for wearing costumes kind of embarrasses Steve at times, and if that is the case it would probably mortify his dad. So since the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few, I wore jeans and a t-shirt. Sigh. Steve and I both left work a little early so we could get consolidate cars and be over in Madison early enough, but that didn't seem to matter much. It was raining, and there was SOOOOOO much traffic that it took us an hour to go from our house to his. Not that the drive was terrible, we were listening to an audio novel called "The History of Almost Everything" or something like that. It's all about physics and biographies of scientists who discovered (or at least took credit for) all the things scientific, like gravity, atoms, dinosaurs and etc. Normally that kind of book would be saved specifically for use as general anesthetic before major surgery, BUT this one happens to be very interesting and written in an entertaining manner. I recommend it highly.

But I digress.

We finally made it over to Mr. Lee's house, and there were no kids in sight. We figured the rain was putting damper (look! A pun!) on things, so we sat back and watched the FOX news channel. Yeah, I hate news. Granted, it was funny that John Kerry made a fool of himself, but I'm almost completely sure he had no real intention of insulting anyone but George Bush...sour grapes, you know.

Anyway, the rain stopped and the kids started. Having lived in the butt-crack of Limestone County for my formative years, we never really had anyone trick-or-treat at our house unless they were out scouting for some house to roll or something. Even in our neighborhood now, we rarely have anyone come to get candy. However, Mr. Lee lives in one of those neighborhoods where the houses are right up against each other and so it's possible for kids to go door to door. We had lots of them come by, and one little girl came twice. I owe that to my patented "Fistfull-Of-Candybars" passing out tactic I developed. I saw Jedi (Steve would be proud I knew at first glance what they look like), monsters, pre-pubescent girls in very inaapropriate outfits, and one kid who I couldn't place finally told me what he was. He was wearing a pink hooded sweatsuit with a red cape. I hated to admit defeat on the guessing game, but he said he was someone called Captain Underpants. This he said with a lisp, so it made it that much harder not to laugh. Who the heck is Captain Underpants? I don't know, but any super-hero who runs around in his tighty whities has got to be awesome. We even had kids come by who weren't even dressed up! The next door neighbor, who is super sweet and always reminds me of the lady who played Glinda the Good in "Wicked" brought her little girl by and we were her official FIRST TRICK-OR-TREAT! She is only about a year old, I guess, and was dressed up as this little cute witch. I knelt down to give her candy and she dove into my bowl. She also kept giving me her hat, so at least she has come kind of idea of give-and-take. At one point, two brothers came by and the first one said "Don't give my brother any candy!" and actually blocked me from getting to him. I just smiled my best "You aren't my kid, so I won't kick you" smile and put my hand into his brothers bag to drop the candy. Brother then closed the bag around my hand and pulled me several steps outside of the doorway before I jerked free. AS I was closing the door, I heard the mom say "OK, we'll take him home so you can finish." Wow. Wonder how often they have those Mom-Likes-You-Best conversations?

At about 8:00 we closed up shop and went to dinner. We discussed politics and war. So, I watched the news and had a serious conversation about such things. On Halloween. Weird things DO happen on that night!