Halloween

Everybody at work wanted to know if we were taking Jonah trick-or-treating today. Because most of my students have children trick-or-treating age, I ended up canceling class, so as not to break up families, or at least not to feel guilty about ruining family bonding time. Jonah, on the other hand, is still too young for walking around the dark streets in a costume, looking for candy.

Tim and I were so lackadaisical about Halloween, as we are about most things, that we let the one pumpkin we brought home from the pumpkin patch rot through and through before getting to the carving. Luckily we had another one we bought from the farm store adjacent to the pumpkin patch. Tim tried to get Jonah excited about carving the pumpkin while I was at work today to no avail. He did get Jonah to scoop out some of the innards while quickly snapping a picture.

I don't believe in purchased costumes or ones made only by adults, and especially not in dressing up children that are too young to know what's going on just to parade them in front of the fam or everyone else on the block. Despite that, this was cute. Daddy decided to dress son up in a construction outfit comprised of items which are already part of his wardrobe: overalls, flannel shirt, and a hard hat Jonah recently got in the mail from his grandma. Tim helped Jonah stuff his pockets and loops with tools including hammer, wrench, paint brush, and screw driver. When I got home from work early, Jonah was in the midst of fixing everything he could get his hands on as sort of a combination repair/construction man. He instantly pulled me into his activities by handing me his tools and asking me to paint the mini cement mixer and fix his tiny pick up truck.


Right before dinner, we lit up the small pumpkin Tim had carved on the porch. Lo and behold, we did have one set of trick-or-treaters. They were a boy and a girl about six and eight years of age with their mom hovering in the background. The girl was dressed as some unrecognizable (at least to me) character and the boy had on a cape and a hideous gray plastic mask that covered his face with thick warty skin and head with fake matted hair. Talk about scary. They refused the candy I handed them and reached into the bowl for a different type: "I don't like that one. I want that one." Okay brats, I thought. Their mom, embarrassed, giggled in the shadows.

Jonah was scared and traumatized by this seemingly mundane event. He reached for me in a panic, wanting to be picked up as soon as ugly boy showed up. Afterwards he couldn't stop asking: "Where Spooky went?" We even made a trip out on the porch to check and make sure "Spooky" was gone. I tried explaining that Spooky was just a little boy wearing a mask, but the encounter was just too real and terrifying for Jonah. Bye, bye, Spooky a.k.a. Brat, don't you come around here no more, I say. And no nightmares either, please.