Preferring Tricks Over Treats

I am a little sad that Halloween is over-I had big plans to do some awesome things but my life got a little bit ahead of me. Oh well.

We did have fun with our neighbors though. Our friend Jeff rigged himself up in a tree with a full body harness and a false noose around his neck. He was dressed in his cowboy gear and his wife and I sat on the lawn. When kids would walk up, he would say, “Hey, let me see that candy” and the kids would walk over and he’d jump off the chair he was standing on and “hang himself.” We made one kid pull the chair out from under Jeff if the kid wanted candy and it scared the crap out of him. Best scare of the night was a group of about 10 Middle Schoolers-mostly girls. Jeff was completely quiet and the kids were talking about whether or not he was real when he all of a sudden jumped off and they screamed bloody murder. It was great. We even had one group come back with their cameras.

I decided that we needed Jeff on tape jumping and hanging himself. I got my video camera and selected “night vision” to add to the creepiness. Jeff got ready, jumped……..and kept falling. KEPT FALLING!!! He fell about 3-4 feet, landed on the grass and lay down for about 10 minutes moaning and muttering expletives. They took a quick trip to the ER and thankfully his shoulder wasn’t dislocated like it first appeared. What I love about my neighbor is how even though he was in pain and on his way to the docs, he still had to see the video of him falling. It is oddly funny.

I have had a couple of weird Halloweens in days past.

3 years ago, while taking my newly walking firstborn greaser son (slicked back hair, jeans rolled up, white t-shirt and "I heart Mom" tattoo) from my mother to my father's house, I got a call from my sister. My brother in law had gone to the store and was walking home when he was hit by a car. they had been married for about 1.8 months. Totally scary. We all went to the ER-with all the rest of San Diego-and were happy to see that he was mostly unscratched. He stuck around to be assessed and then spent a couple of days at home healing. Yikes. It was an introduction into The Life of my brother in law and many more interesting phone calls from my sister, "Don't worry but he hurt his........"

It was only a few years before that when my new kitten, Zoe, was playing with a towel on the counter and she pulled down the glass blender on her teeny tiny furry foot. She was only a few months old, she had only been a Zab for 1 month and I got to take her to the vet. As I waited to hear from them, I went to my Parents' house. I walked up and saw a bat on the screen. "How cute, Mom decorated for Halloween! Wait a minute, Mom NEVER decorates for Halloween!" I took a few steps closer and realized that the bat decoration was, in fact, a REAL bat. A tiny fruit bat. Clinging to the screen of my parents' front door. I chose the BACK door and when I told my mom about the bat, it took a little while for her to believe me!

We called animal control, got the work number of "The Bat Guy" who was a computer programmer for a local company and he said we had to just wait it out. The bat should leave at dusk. Unable to use the front door, we thought that a bat on the screen door of a local house in Tierrasanta might make for an interesting news story. Mom picked up the phone and started dialing.

NBC 7/39 hung up on us.
KUSI transferred us into some sort of weird voice mail hell.
10 News laughed and said thanks but that was all.
Channel 8 was nice enough to listen to us and even to shine us on with a story that they would come by if they were in the area. Thanks for keeping it real, Channel 8!

When I told my neighbor all of these stories as he was down on our front lawn in total and complete pain, he sat up halfway and said, "See! It's all YOUR fault!!"