Text 2925, 122 rader
Skriven 2005-10-27 08:14:20 av Greg Sears (3:633/104)
Ärende: B O O
=============
HALLOWEEN: WHAT'S THE USE?
by Andrew Hicks

 When I was younger, Halloween was a sacred holiday, a
chance to canvass the neighborhood in whatever cheap, flammable
costume I could find, sometimes changing costumes and making
repeat visits to the same houses. It wasn't until the age of 12 that I
finally asked myself, "What's the use?" That was the year I went out
without a costume, as then-President George Bush. Some neighbors
recognized the impression, others thought I was using my natural
speaking voice and asked where my costume was. Despite my lack of
proper Halloween attire, I managed to collect a bucket full of candy
effortlessly.

 The only challenge on Halloween night every year came from
the same old lady. You'd think by my Bush Halloween I would have
learned better, but I walked up to her door and rang the bell anyway.
It's my theory that, in every neighborhood, there's one lady just like
her who makes you "earn" your Halloween candy by calling kids'
bluffs when it comes to trick-or-treating by actually making them do a
trick. Most other years I'd just stood there dumbfounded when she
demanded that I do a trick, but that year I immediately launched into a
spontaneous George Bush speech about Dan, Bar, Millie and Gorby
that lasted at least three minutes.

 She just stood there, not cracking a smile the entire time, but
when I finished, she apparently thought I'd put forth the required
amount of effort to earn my "fun size" candy. I still remember the
exact words she said: "That sounds like some of George Bush's baloney,
but this is no baloney -- you get a Butterfinger!" All that hard
work for candy I didn't even like. I had an epiphany that night: why
spend hours gathering candy when you can go to the store with a
couple bucks and just buy some damn candy instead? I still see the
woman walking her dogs occasionally and can never resist the urge to
yell out, "Wouldn't be prudent!" at her.

 The very appeal of Halloween is this something-for-nothing
mentality, the false notion that if you dress up strange and go from
door to door, people will give you things. A couple years later, around
Halloween, I really did get something for nothing. It all started at
Dierberg's, a local supermarket. They had an enormous pumpkin on
display that was at least four feet high and three feet across. (I won't
give you the radius, but based on the measurements I just gave, you
can calculate it from pi if you're interested. Answers are in the back
of the book.) The pumpkin was to be a prize in a contest, given to the
customer who was closest to guessing the pumpkin's weight.

 I don't know why anyone would want a pumpkin that big,
except as a companion piece to a freakish, hundred-pound gourd, but
for some reason, one Saturday afternoon while my mom was grocery
shopping, I filled out at least twenty contest entry slips, guessing the
pumpkin's weight in increments of five pounds, from 100 to 200.
Then, as an afterthought and a joke, I filled out one slip that read
"152 pounds, 12 ounces," under my name but with my best friend's phone
number. Don't ask why; I was in eighth grade.

 Maybe two weeks later, my best friend called me up, frantic.
"Find out what the hell that guy's talking about!" his dad yelled in the
background. My friend played me an answering machine message:
"Congratulations, Andrew, you won the pumpkin. It was 153 pounds
on the nose. You were four ounces off; what accuracy! Anyway, you
can come by anytime from now until Halloween to pick the pumpkin
up. You'd better bring a truck or something." I explained the situation
and apologized, but his dad hated me from that moment forward.

 I had a bigger problem than losing the approval of my best
friend's dad. I had to figure out how to get a 153-pound pumpkin from
the store to my house. That was the part I hadn't considered when
filling out all those entry slips. It was a man's problem and, with a
couple thousand miles and a divorce separating me from my dad, I had
to call in the big guns -- Grandpa, the 79-year-old problem solver. He
showed up in our driveway the next morning at 6:30 with no greeting
other than, "Let's go get that monster pumpkin." We wrestled the
damn thing into the passenger seat of his Thunderbird, where it sat up
strong, its orange skin overlooking the open road. We put the seatbelt
around it, full knowing if Grandpa got in an accident, the pumpkin's
white seeds and orange guts would be splattered all over the highway.
There are no airbags in an '88 T-bird.

 The pumpkin made it home safe, solving that piece of a much
bigger problem. I had to put the pumpkin to some kind of practical
use, but again I ask, what practical use is there for a mutant,
four-foot pumpkin? I could have made a 153-pound pumpkin pie, I suppose,
but in the end I did what any other kid would do. I carved the mother
up, gave it a giant scary face and put it in the front yard with a black
light inside, on display for everyone to see. "Screw your puny
five-pound pumpkins," it anounced to passersby. "I'm huge!" There's
something frighteningly phallic about a pumpkin that big. Of course, the
whole thing came full circle when some of the neighbor kids kicked it in
on Halloween night.

 Halloween today is nothing special for me. When you're in
college, the novelty is gone, although some people still dress up for
the holiday. I saw a girl last year who had her hair dyed red and an
earring in her nose, and was wearing all black with fishnet stockings
and Army boots. Her friend was wearing a clown costume. Halloween:
what's the use?


From the Internet humor diaries "Another Year in the Life of a Nerd"
and "Yet Another Year in the Life of a Nerd," available in their
entirety at the Andrew Hicks WWW Extravaganza homepage
(http://www.missouri.edu/~c667778).

Subscribe to the "Yet Another Year" mailing list and receive the diary
entries in your e-mail box as they're written. Send a subscribe request
to c667778@showme.missouri.edu

Copyright 1997 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions


+=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+
|  /\_/\   "I think, ||       I C E-man          ||[ YOUR  COMPANY ]|
|  |o -|   I'll open || iceforfree@hotmail.com   ||[  SLOGAN HERE  ]|
|=(__*__)=  another  ||                          ||[    FOR ONLY   ]|
| ,' U ',   message" ||     ---Cheers!---        ||[ $1000 A MONTH!]|
+=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=+

...  "Janet!", "Dr. Scott!", "Janet!", "Brad!", "Rocky!", "Bullwinkle!"

--- EzyBlueWave V2.01b006 00F90257
 * Origin: Afraid of the competition? We ARE the Competition! (3:633/104)