Tuesday, November 2, 2010

1408

Halloween was a whirl of pumpkin guts and crinkling KitKat wrappers.

As trick-or-treaters began knocking, I was still stabbing out the letters of 'West Side Story' into my last pumpkin at the kitchen table. I heard my sister and mom outside, oo-ing over the pumpkins I'd already set up, and my sister rang the doorbell because honestly, does she think she's being funny?

I slid the knife out of the pumpkin crease and dragged myself to open the door and--children! An angel and a witch, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, and suddenly I realized: I'm holding a knife. Not a plastic Halloween prop butcher knife either, a very real and very sharp Ikea knife with a heavy black handle and one helluva blade that had already slaughtered five pumpkins.

Flustered, I tried to palm it--and nearly hid it in the candy bowl before it ocurred to me that could be a dangerously stupid move--and showered them with candy. The door was half closed before they even cried 'thank you.'


If you look closely, you can see the intricately carved witch flying on a broom that dots the i. Yeah. Yeah, totally.
I did five pumpkins this year: Wicked, West Side Story, Avenue Q (that's kid-friendly, right?), Rent and Glee. I kept waiting for someone to pshaw, Glee is not a Broadway musical, but no one did. It's possible I'm the only one that cares about these things.


No one recognized Avenue Q. Apparently classics such as 'What Do You Do With a BA in English?' have been forgotten.

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