The Simplicity of Spooky
Yesterday, we saw pumpkins already lined up at the supermarket. I shielded my husband’s eyes.
“I see them; you know what that means,” Jewell beamed.
“It’s too early!”
When we visit Lowe’s this time of year, Jewell fawns over the animatronics. A grim reaper lowering his scythe, a Frankenstein with glowing eyes, a witch who cackles at you through the magic of a motion detector, and of course the inflatable pumpkins, Jack Skellingtons, vampires, etc.
These are not for us.
Simplicity is best for our family of three adults and one pooch. We, all of us over 40, carve pumpkins. Because why should we give that up? So what if we don’t carve them until the actual 31st of October? Besides, the pumpkin seeds make for healthy snacking. So what if a mason jar of them on the coffee table was forgotten in plain sight for six months?
Last year I decided to do something “extra.” Using a tumbleweed and a discarded white sheet, I created a ghost. I bought dollar store orange and green Halloween lights. I wrapped those lights around and inside the tumbleweed. I draped the white sheet over it. I expected the tumbleweed to look like a giant orange and green glowing brain. Perhaps this was the ghost of one of those creatures found at Roswell, 1947.
I hung my alien ghost. I stepped back. I expected to be dazzled!
I wasn’t.
My friend Candice saw it one night. She said it was convincing. Alas, her review did not convince me. The next evening, as we parked, I looked at my ghost and realized something: The sunflowers we hadn’t yet deadheaded looked spookier than my poor ghost.
When we did some mid-summer cleaning, “Do you want to keep your ghost?”
I declined. I could have composted the tumbleweed…but those damn lights would be hell to unravel.
Working in retail, some people are tempted to take their employee discount and buy things before they go on sale. Not me. If it’s not at least 40 or 65 percent off before I apply my discount, it’s not coming home. I did, however, keep my eye locked on a fabric skeleton wearing a top hat with orange banding. It reminded me of the battered 1960s-era paper skeleton my late father attached to our front door.
“You know,” I remember telling, or consoling myself, “if I get some felt, figure out how to use the sewing machine, I bet…I bet I could make one of these myself.”
Until, of course, I saw my handiwork with the tumbleweed ghost.
I was hoping he’d be marked down to half-off the night before Halloween. Nope, it wasn’t until November 1st that I could take him home. I hung him on the front door, where he stayed until my in-laws began discussing Thanksgiving dinner.
At the dollar store around the corner, I was likewise mesmerized by a black cat. One of those plastic, made-in-China, non-biodegradable caprices some would-be Martha Stewart would probably buy in pairs to place on a buffet, flanking porch columns, or on a mantelpiece.
But not me…
…not until she went on sale! Biodegradable be damned. I took Scary Kitty home. She sat on the coffee table, like the pumpkin seeds — quite forgotten in plain sight. Christmas came. I was so attached to her, despite the puppy being mildly terrified by Kitty’s arched back and exposed teeth, that when Christmas came, she got a red bow. I put her under the tree, where she eventually donned a Santa hat.
By the way: Scary Kitty, at floor level, had an unexpected reaction from the dog. She won’t go anywhere near the faux feline. Our ornaments went undisturbed by the wagging tail.
This year at work, there is a Halloween nutcracker. His head’s a jack-o’-lantern! “Could you imagine,” I hear the ghost of Noёl Coward whisper. There are also Halloween pillows depicting haunted Victorian mansions, with little cut-out white felt ghosts, and felt bats, and, and, and … but I won’t buy these.
Not until, of course, November 1st.
