Smashing Pumpkins

I was shaping up to be so lazy this past Halloween. The idea to dress a bunch of us friends up as Tetris blocks (I was to be L) never materialized. I didn’t go to a party. All I had on plan was handing out 98 novelty-size chocolate bars to trick-or-treaters from the Oak Bay home I was house sitting for the week.
But by four o’clock October 31, out of an embarrassing lack of All Hallow spirit, I bought a pumpkin and quickly gutted, scraped, carved and shaved a jack-o-lantern out of it. Now at least I wasn’t a total Scrooge, or whatever Halloween’s equivalent is.
Because, do you remember wobbling around the block in a witch or clown costume with your Dad chaperoning from a short distance, gently instructing you–with a hint of apprehension in his voice–to pass over the homes with no lights on?
More unsettling to a little guy than the cold and dark, or the teenagers with fireworks, or the stomachache on November 1–were these party-pooping homes. Like death itself lived in them, or some indescribably angry old man who surely hated kids. No one explained why I couldn’t get candy from these homes. It was like they held a grotesque secret that every adult had known about for years. It choked me up: if people live there (and they did, cause you could sometimes see them in a window, or could hear a big dog barking inside), why didn’t they like Halloween like everyone else? Why wouldn’t they want to be nice to me when so many other homes were?
So I just couldn’t stand to be one of those homes this past Halloween. So I put my fresh, one-toothed pumpkin on the front steps and spent the next two hours literally standing behind the front door, pressing my face into its little rectangular iron-work grate and spying for my first customers. I even had a costume; well, sorta: that mullet wig I got a few years ago when I dressed up as Bjorn Borg. But I also had a kind of 80s logo t-shirt on, and my whole shtick was kind of beach-boy dude accent and trailer trash vocabulary.
And I thought up a little greeting to compensate for my half-assed attire. I kept an unwrapped mini chocolate bar ready by the door, and when I heard the pleads for treats I would pop it one corner of my mouth like a cigar, open the door and–out of the other corner of my mouth, like some Chrétien from the hills of Nebraska–slur something like: “Heya, mmmmman, got some damn fine candy here [long pause] eh! you kids want some?”
By 10pm I’d only handed out candy three times: a couple of definitely-over-age teenage girls and two UVic students looking for food donations (they got a can of apple sauce and a can of kidney beans; I felt bad afterwards about the beans).
A couple groups of kids with their parents simply passed right over my place. I carved a pumpkin! I had pretty good treats (Crispy Crunch, Wonderbar, Caramel). Sheesh, what does it take? The whole street was a pretty sad site, festivities wise. There were enough unlit homes to give me the shivers. But it was the one goody-two-shoe neighbor right across the street that was taking away all my customers. But I had to hand it to them, they had like ten pumpkins carved by Michelangelo himself glowing away, and would set off a barrage of fireworks right on their lawn every time kids came to the door. Hard to compete with that.
By morning my pumpkin was gone from the front steps. I’d left it out over night intentionally. I believe the proper way for any Halloween pumpkin to go is in a carnal kersplat of mild teenage vandalism.
Over the next four days I ate the remaining 89 candy bars.

Oh you’re so cute Casey. I’m impressed you sat still for this photo.