A Quarter Life Crisis

Halloween is probably my favorite holiday second to Christmas. You know Christmas is all about salvation for us practicing Christians and I generally like the whole good will towards man-vibe out there in the air. Also my brain links Christmas with homemade chocolate chip cookies even though Wander stopped making the lovelies years and years go. Since her decline in mom duties I've tried to pick up the slack but last years' batch accidentally got hit with a tablespoon instead of a teaspoon of baking soda which resulted in salty chip cookies. Not so good people, not so good, but I digress.

Halloween is fantabulous in my book. Most years I hand out fistfuls of candy to little devils and angels, very happily I might add. It's just something about candy and kids that lifts my spirits. Despite what some have come to think I actually like children, especially when I can give them back immediately with no strings attached to their parents. Like any other Halloween evening I made my way to Wander's house in time to pass candy to the children. Yep I was all ready with buckets of skittles and starbursts and little mini hershey bars but you know what, nothing. Nothing nothing nothing,there were no kids. Count them folks no kiddies. And under normal circumstances no children would be perfectly fine with me but not on Halloween the day when all little tots and tot-ettes are suggested, hell even requested at this point. The only person who showed up was a toothless neighbor from down the street wanting to know if my mom was interested in the puppies he's selling. Consider my surprise when I jumped up bowl o' candy in hand only to find the no tooth bandit at the door. Pretty depressing if I do say so myself.

On top of that I didn't even watch any killer scary movies. You know blood and gore don't go over well with Wander unless there's a vampire involved. I don't try to understand her people I was just born to her. Instead we ended up watching 88 Minutes with Al Pacino and some dude whose face I can remember but I can't recall his name. It was some type of suspense thriller parading around like a serial killer drama, bottom line here it ended shitty and I was disappointed. And that's how I spent Halloween night.

To make up for the horror that was Halloween night I upped the ante the next day and decided to go to a haunted house type attraction called the Field of Screams. And while in the field I did in deed scream. Mostly during the ride into the corn field when we were all closed in a scene that looked like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There's something about having a fake chainsaw run across the small of your back that leads to fits of uncontrollable screams. My brother even clipped me in the chin as he wildly flapped his arms I presume out of fear as I would hope he wasn't just lying in wait for the chance to punch me in the face, but you never know.

In any event the field made up slightly for the unhappy Halloween the night before but it didn't in any way make up for the damn deer that that tried to run us off the road. Oh yeah I never really believed folks when they said that the deer hit their car as opposed to them hitting the deer. Now I know that that is probably the truest truth. So we're driving within the 65mph speed limit along a no light winding highway somewhere in Amish country when out of no where a deer appeared in the middle of the road. Luckily I wasn't driving cause I just froze, stopped talking,lost one of my of cheese fries in my friend's seat cushion never to be seen again and I'm almost positive my breathing slowed to close to nothing. Instinctively my friend moved to the side to avoid the deer when all of sudden Bambi's pop started running toward the car. Yup, yup, yup no time like the present to see your life flash before your eyes. It obviously wasn't our time because we missed the deer, thank God, and once out of the shock of the situation both my chain smoking best friend and I began screaming all kinds of expletive's.

From the backseat my oblivious brother calmly says, "You know what, you curse too much."