It Ain't Easy Being Pink

Halloween with a five-year old is hilarious, but I must confess that the neighborhood roamings fall far short of my memories of this holiday.

There's Ella, dressed as Shanti, and Indian, and I put together a last-minute $7.50 Miss Piggy Costume. It turns out I was the ONLY adult in the groups that escorted the kids to actually dress up! What the hell? And then I rifled through my parents' old photo albums and look what I found from 1973:

Who knew I had such a fondness for pink tutus? This year my sister and her best friend decided to celebrate 10 years of being best friends by flying to New Orleans to see Widespread Panic play a concert that started by a roadie coming on stage and shouting into the microphone: "We've lost all hope, so dance your asses off, you fucking freaks!!" I find odd beauty and simplicity in that. Because at some point in time, there is only so much worrying and planning you can do, you just have to step up to the plate and let your freak flag fly a little higher than you ever have before--this half mast stuff gets old. So I stayed with Ella and we went to the neighborhood where her dad and lots of her friends live because she spent the first 5 years of her life there, so we trooped around, 6 parents and 5 kids, all under 5, for a couple of hours and supervised the hunting and gathering. Ella, being bossy and competitive, led each attack, literally sprinting to each door, friends in tow, to bang on a door and then proceed to walk past the lucky homeowner into the center of their living room, silently awaiting her reward of miniature candy bars. She was immensely successful. Upon release, she then sprinted from doorstoop to street, shouting "Miss Piggy!!" the entire way.

I chatted with Keith (her dad) about my memories of Halloweens we had in the 70's, back when NO ONE worried (seriously worried) about snatchers and pickle ticklers and all the freaks you can look up online now that live in your safe little neighborhood. They let us roam free. For hours. In the dark. Completely unsupervised. With pillowcases instead if plastic jack-o-lantern buckets to collect candy in. They sometimes became too heavy for us to carry home. No joke. Keith said they would put on two masks, collect candy from Mrs. Jones, walk down the steps, put the other mask on, and go in for round #2. And there would be packs, hordes of kids just like us, with parents just as trusting and permissive as ours, scouring and trolling through our neighborhood that literally stretched for miles and miles. I have very very fond memories of Halloween inthe 70's. Sure, every now and then some dumb kid would actually slice part of his tongue off by biting into a razor-studded apple, or suck on a hard candy that had been soaking up LSD for several days...but not us. We waited until the '80's to experiment with LSD--why push it?

That's Ella and friend Seamus. She actually managed to utter "Namaste" after each candy bar was dropped into her bucket.

And there is her booty. I guess Kit Kats were on sale this year--she got 10.

I have some other tidbits I will write about later...