Sister of Pumpkin Head

            Everyone in my family loves Halloween. Some of us love it a little too much. Take my little brother, Steve. He went to culinary school so he is a little more artist than some. He carves the coolest jack-o-lanterns and will have a huge butcher knife sticking out of the top of it or take some gigantic screws and spark plugs and have them sticking out at various places in poor Jack’s head. He has, on several occasions, gotten a pumpkin big enough to fit over his head and made his jack-o-lantern a mask…and then set out to scare the bejesus out of unsuspecting family members.

            I had just arrived at my mom and dad’s house to have my little boy trick-or-treat them when my parents asked if my brother had found me yet. I knew that this was a bad thing considering that they were laughing. I asked why he was looking for me; they said “no reason, he just wants to show you his Halloween costume.” I didn’t know what he was dressed as but I knew that he was out to scare me into peeing my pants. I became a little paranoid and decided that we would go to my grandma’s house rather than be a sitting duck for whatever was coming for me. I am that big of a chicken.

            My mom, my son, my husband, and I went to my elderly grandma’s house and spent some time there, all the while I was looking out the window and waiting for the door to swing open and have him run in to frighten me. I did feel safer at Grandma’s though because I knew that Steve would not try to scare me at the expense of giving Grandma a heart attack…until I learned that he had already been to her house in his costume. The boy had no shame but for a moment I felt that my efforts at hiding out were going to pay off. He had already been to Grandma’s so he wouldn’t need to come back. But I also considered that he was looking for me and all my short-lived comfort evaporated.  My mom was telling me that he had shown our other brother his costume. Steve had hidden in the back seat of his car and sat up once the driver’s side door shut. I was feeling really squeamish at this point.  

            We decided that it was time to leave Grandma’s and head back to my mom’s to drop her off. It was ridiculously dark out and I was unhappy that I had to walk thirty feet to my car in this pitch black night. Steve could be lurking behind my car or behind a tree, waiting for his opportunity to jump out and scare me to death. We got to the car without incident and I wish I could say that I was breathing easier. I was not; we were just a moving target now.

            We pulled into my mom’s driveway and there was my brother’s car. I jumped out of the car before it stopped, good thing my husband was driving, ran to the house and plowed through the front door just as he was putting his mask on to go out the back way, no doubt to circle the house and scare me before I made it to the sanctuary of the lighted entry way. He had on old, dirty coveralls and the biggest jack-o-lantern I had ever seen was his mask. Upon seeing him in this getup I was thankful that I had found him before he found me. I would’ve peed myself for sure.

            Sister of Pumpkin Head, that’s me.

A Blind Date to Prom

            In my high school years I dated a guy who had a great mom and two wonderful sisters. Since I have no sisters I latched on to them and never have let go. It is now twenty-two years later and I still haven’t let go of them. One of them was the maid of honor when I got married the first time (not to her brother) and although we rarely see each other there is still so much love there.

            Back when I was dating their brother there was a situation that arose that really torked us, the sisters, their mother, and me, off. The younger sister, Wendee, was getting ready for her Senior prom when she found out that her date had decided to be a jerk and not escort her. I remember showing up at her mother’s house and her mother was doing her hair and telling her that she could go alone and it would be fine. Wendee did not agree. Her older and very protective sister, Necole, showed up a little after I did and we rallied. This had to have a fix. We began to brain-storm. Wendee was just going to skip her prom but her sister, mom and I were not down with her not going. She looked beautiful and her dress was dazzling, I had gone with her to shop for it and it would be a true disaster if no one saw her in it.

Prom was in a few hours and everyone had a date…except my younger brother who went to a different high school. I called him and asked if he had any plans, he said he did not. I asked if he wanted to go to prom with my boyfriend’s sister, who he had never met, and explained what had happened to her. He did mention to me that he did not have a tuxedo just lying around but Necole, Diane (the mother in this story) and I were way ahead of him. We all jumped in Diane’s car and went to fetch his tux. We knew where the now-replaced prom date had ordered his tux from so we pooled our money and went to pick it up. My brother was just about the same size as the other guy so this was working out beautifully. We got the tux, jumped back in the car, and raced back to the house to wait on my brother to arrive, meet the lovely girl he was taking to prom, and get dressed. They even had enough time to keep their dinner reservations with her friends and their dates before heading off to the dance.

Never underestimate the power of resourceful and really angry women because they truly can find a way to make anything happen, even conjure a (better) prom date within hours of the dance.

Fifty Dollar Words

      Adam and Drew were spending a quiet evening with my mom one night. Just the three of them. She was reading while they were jumping on the trampoline not far from her. Adam needed a drink and told my mom about it. She in turn asks him what the magic word was and he answered her. “Abracadabra?” And she was expecting it to be ‘please’. Silly woman.

      When the twins were born Alexander had just turned five. He has always had a big vocabulary and understands the words he uses. He mainly was around adults and his father and I have a habit of throwing around fifty dollar words anyway. After a particularly hard night of our boys being awake all night and mom being dead on her feet and miserable Alexander shakes his little head and says to me “Our babies are nocturnal.” A truer statement was never uttered in the history of the world.

 

      We were driving to Alex’s all-band concert the other evening when we passed a cemetery. Adam just shook his little head and said "Wow, that sure is a whole lot of dead people." It made it sound as if there was just heaping piles of dead people lying out in the open with no regard for order. Sometimes he is incredibly literal.

Ratting Out the One You Love

      One night we were at my children’s elementary school for Alex’s orchestra concert. There was a sign that was hanging that said ‘WELCOME’. Adam was asking me about it. "What did it say?"

    "Welcome" I reply.

    "Why is it red and white?" he asks. 

    "Because those are the colors that were chosen for the sign" I tell him.

     He is still studying it and I know we have more we are going to discuss about the sign and it’s origins. After a minute or so he says "Ok, I get it. The ‘o’ is silent."  Huh? Alright, I let that one go for now, the explaining is more than I can do some days, besides, he is learning to read at school and this is a good one for his teacher to answer and explain.

 

            At parent/teacher conferences this year we heard a few things that we really didn’t expect. Adam and Drew are in the same kindergarten class so conferences were easy. What we learned was that Adam will raise his hand to get his teacher’s attention…to tell on his brother. There are two kids named Drew in the same class this year so my son is known as Drew B. Adam raised his hand in class to tell his teacher that Drew B. wasn’t doing his work. When I asked him about this he denied it all but since I heard it from the one who called on him when he was telling on his brother, I believe that he did rat his brother out.

Musical Classrooms

 

            I was a little concerned when my twins started preschool. Whenever I try to think out possible obstacles that await my twins I usually come nowhere near the real possibilities. I assumed that they would do well because they had always had each other and so that meant that they had learned the important things like how to share with others and such. Sure the sharing thing comes and goes but my oldest had never had to worry about that as he was the only child so this is something I thought I had nailed in lieu of the future of the twins. Sharing in the extreme is what I got. The boys were in separate classrooms, not by any design of mine as I had no preference but the school decided this and I was okay with it. A few weeks into the school year Drew’s teacher wanted to speak with me. Uh-oh…this was the first of many, many times that she and I had to speak. Anyway, they had noticed that Drew was missing from the classroom at the same time the other teacher noticed she had an extra student. Yes, Drew wanted to play with Adam so he just went to him. Also during naptime Adam’s teacher noticed the boys napping together on Adam’s rest mat. I tried to address this at home with little success. “You need to stay in your own room” “You have a different teacher and classroom than Adam” “People will worry about you if you are missing from your room” etcetera. To these brilliant reasonings my little boy would simply ask “Why?”  and after considerable trying on my part and Drew not coming over to my way of thinking Adam stepped in, literally, standing in between Drew and me and stating quite simply that “He can come visit me anytime he wants.” Okay, who am I to argue with the bonds of brotherhood? The school was on their own as far as I was concerned.

God's Dog

            We had a dog named Turbo. He had been my dog for more years than I could count but my

twins had known him for the last few years of his life. He was a miniature Schnauzer. He was grey

and looked like a little old man his entire life. He was adorable and it broke all of our hearts when he

was killed. Drew still brings him up and tells me that he misses Turbo. Drew has some musings about

the dog afterlife. He knows of Heaven and all that we believe is waiting for us on the other side of

this life. Why should it be different for dogs? Drew reckons that Turbo is now God’s dog and that

God is taking care of him until we all reunite in Heaven one day. He believes that God pets and walks

our dog. That God wants our dog to be happy in Heaven and because of that Drew is certain that God

has all sorts of wonderful things for Turbo to pee on. Turbo was a property marking little pooch. He

was particularly fond of peeing on the tires of my car so it would stand to reason that God would

provide tires for Turbo to make him happy and feel right at home. I must concur with Drew’s ideas

and find it charming that my youngest son has put such thought into wanting Turbo to be happy while

he is away from us. When I get to Heaven I will not be at all surprised to see tires of all sizes just for

my dog. Rest in peace Turbo, we miss you.

The Killing of the Juice

      I have learned that I need to work on my enunciation. We read the Bible and a variety of non-Biblical literature. When the boys have a question they raise their little hands just as they learned to do in school however when I have my nose in a book I don’t normally see the little digits waving to me with a confused little boy at the end of that arm. I was asked why anyone wanted to kill ’juice’ and that you really can’t kill ’juice’ because it isn’t alive and that this story really doesn’t make any sense at all. As always, it takes me just a second or two to come up with  what on earth is being asked and when did I say anything about juice? Jews. Juice. I get it. I explained that I was really saying Jews because they are a group of people mentioned in the Bible. Then I am asked why they, the Jews, wanted to kill juice. No, we need to back up a little. The Jews, I explain, were God’s chosen people, that juice had nothing to do with the story and that I had said the word ’Jews’ and it sounded like ’juice’. Both twins look at me as though disappointed that there was really no juice in the story and that that was a huge letdown.