For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.performancepress.com.
Watching the Blair Witch Project on Halloween reminded me of the times I've been lost in the woods.
This particular story starts when I was in the Boy Scouts. Each summer our troop would leave the flatlands of Kansas and drive to our special campsite in the Medicine Bow National Forest west of Centennial, Wyoming. We loaded about 40 Scouts and 10 adults on a big yellow school bus and headed out I-70.
Since the troop leaders who were driving the bus could only endure 27 choruses of "99 Bottles of Beer" per day, we stopped for the night in Limon, Colorado. (I'll never forget the look on the face of the guy at the A & W when our Scoutmaster walked up and said "I'd like 150 hamburgers and 50 orders of fries".) We had arranged to stay in an abandoned Co-op warehouse. The owner simply asked that we sweep it out in return for sleeping on the concrete floor. Some advice for you: don't ever take 20 activity-starved teen-agers off a bus and give them brooms in a giant room full of the powdered residue of a dozen years of grain storage. Can you say "Depression-Era Oklahoma"? We may have actually gotten some of the dust to move toward the door, but the majority of it was simply kicked up into the air where it remained until it could be safely vacuumed up into the lungs of us boys as we tried to go to sleep.
The next day we finished the drive, stopping only to marvel at the sights in majestic Buford, Wyoming (population: 4). The campsite was in a spot further up the road called Carlson Park, which had the benefit of having a freshwater spring to supply us for the week. I have many stories to tell of the good times we had in Carlson Park, but I'll save those for later (including the story of how Odle and I stayed awake all night convinced that there was a bear outside our tent, salivating as he thought of the tender vittles he'd find if he just ripped the tent...right....THERE!) But THIS blog is about being lost in the woods.
From Carlson Park, it was possible to hike a rather pretty 3-mile trail up to the rim above Crater Lake. From the rim, it was another good half-hour of quad-busting legwork to follow the trail down the steep switchbacks to the lake itself. Legend had it that the lake was so deep that no one had ever found the bottom. We imagined it being inhabited by Nessie's cousin (or worse), and only the bravest of the boys were willing to venture a toe into its icy waters.
During our stay at the crater, we amused ourselves by skipping rocks, eating our trail mix, and throwing pine cones at each other. Since I had a brand new 3-inch format black and white Kodak plastic camera (the forerunner of the Insta-matic, only much crappier), I had the kids pose for a totally cool classic shot that I knew would be featured on the cover of Boy's Life Magazine. Each kid found a spot below the cliffs and arranged himself to look as mutilated and broken as possible. From high up on the cliff, it appeared that bodies had been strewn across the landscape after falling from the summit. Was it a horrid plane crash? Some lemming-like mass hysteria? Or were they all lined up along the edge when a strong gust of wind came along? No one would know, but the photo would show the tragic aftermath.
It was fun being a high-art photographer. And I'll admit that I took a little longer than was strictly necessary to actually take the picture. I chuckled to myself thinking about how uncomfortable the guys must be in their contorted poses. But finally I told them they could get up.
(I couldn't wait to get back to Kansas and have the film developed. Unfortunately, the picture sucked. In the washed-out black and white print, the crushed and mangled bodies of my oh-so-patient friends so far below my vantage point looked exactly like the rocks that occurred naturally all over the hillside. Ho hum. No covers credits for me with that camera.)
After the photo session, we enjoyed a pleasant and uneventful hike back to camp.
(WAIT A MINUTE! YOU SAID YOU WERE GOING TO TELL US ABOUT BEING LOST IN THE WOODS! WHAT GIVES?)
Uh, I was getting to that. You see, I enjoyed the hike to crater lake so much that I came back to do it again about 20 years later. I brought my brother along, who was on leave from his job as a highly-trained survival specialist in the US Marine Corps. We had compasses, topo maps, several canteens each, rain ponchos, and waterproof boots. My brother also had a holster belt with his Leatherman multi-pupose tool, a flashlight, water purification tablets, and his Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum. We felt that we were prepared for just about anything.
We made it to the lake in short order. But rather than follow the trail back to the car, we decided to strike out across country. We had topo maps, after all, and we were both trained in orienteering.
You know where this is going, don't you? About 3.7 minutes after we left the trail, we had no idea where we were on the map. We knew we were generally headed in the right direction, but...
Actually, it didn't take too long to find the road. Sure, we'd had to walk through a lot more swamp than we'd intended. And we really didn't enjoy walking through the 2-acre moonscape full of jagged rocks that would neatly slice your jugular if you fell. And a .357 Magnum doesn't help a whit against 40 billion ravenous mosquitoes. But really, the hike back wasn't bad. As I said, we quickly found the road.
Well, it was "a" road, anyway. We came out of the woods near a particularly gnarly tree that we certainly would've remembered if we'd have seen it on the way in. Hmmm. There were a couple of roads on the topo map that possibly represented our location. We ruminated and cogitated, checked which side of the trees the moss was on, and then headed off that-a-way. On the map, it looked like about a mile to the road we could take to find the car.
Two hours later, we began to wonder if we might want to reconsider our route. We drank from our canteens, spent a few minutes ruminating and cogitating, and then resumed our previous course.
Two more hours later, we began to think about what we were gonna do if we needed to spend the night in the woods. We now both admitted that we were thoroughly lost, and were more likely to see Bigfoot than our little green Toyota. We weren't particularly worried, since we had plenty of survival tools, but it was vexing nonetheless.
Taking a deep breath, we turned around to backtrack the road we'd been following. I won't bore you with all the subjects we talked about during this time of sibling bonding, but I'm pretty sure we covered everything from who makes crop circles to why the French like Jerry Lewis to the very nature of God himself.
Finally...There! There was the gnarly tree. OK, now we can head the other direction and see if we have any better luck. We have about an hour and a half of daylight left. Maybe a Park Ranger will drive by. Maybe we'll see a trail sign. Maybe a vacationing millionaire will pass by in the Batcopter and drop us the Bat-ladder.
We started to walk. Literally (I'm NOT exaggerating) TWO steps past the gnarly tree, I could see my car. Two flippin' steps in the direction opposite the way we went. We'd originally come out of the woods about 40 feet from our vehicle...just on the wrong side of a big damn tree. On one hand, it was comforting to know that our original navigation wasn't all that bad, but on the other hand...damn, those mosquito bites itched.
Next time, I'm sticking to the trail. See ya. Terry
Thursday, October 31, 2002
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.performancepress.com.
Before I stumbled across the Secrets to Success with Women, I had severe problems trying to figure out how to impress girls. The incident I am about to relate happened in my teens, long after most boys grow out of the "pulling her pigtails shows how much you like her" phase of affection display. By then, normal guys have discovered that talking to girls, paying attention to what she says, and letting her know that you like her work much better than random acts of cruelty. But I wasn't a normal guy.
The girl in question was Lisa Pearce. Very cute. Very sweet. Long dark hair, and a smile that would melt your heart. She had always been nice to me. We'd even spent some time together baking 4-layer cakes for her mom's birthday. I liked her a lot. But she was popular, and always had plenty of boyfriends hanging around. I had never given her any reason to think that I liked her.
I wanted to do something to get her attention. Send her a card? No, too stupid. Buy her flowers? No, too gay. Talk to her as if we could possibly be friends? Yeah, right; I'm WAY too much of a nerd for that.
TP the crap out of her house? Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good plan.
At the next meeting of the neighborhood boy club, I suggested that we ought to think about a prank to pull for Halloween. Sure. Sounds good. Who should we get?
It helped that my sister was starting to hang around with Lisa's big brother, Mike. Mike was a big star on the Wrestling and Football teams, and loved to torment us younger guys. So when I suggested the Pearce's, it seemed a natural thing to do; it'd be revenge against Mike, and it would upset my sister. The fact that Lisa happened to live in the same house was just considered collateral damage.
We started planning weeks in advance. Normally, a good TP job consisted of a 4-roll pack of El-Cheapo toilet paper, and about 10 minutes worth of heaving the rolls toward the trees. We weren't planning to do a good job, though...we were going to do the Best Ever -- God, They'll Be Talking About It For Years job.
We made a shopping list. Lewis would buy 24 rolls of toilet paper. Kass would get a couple dozen gunpowder booby traps -- you know, the kind where you tie a string to the doorknob so that it pops when they open. The Ant would gather up a week's worth of newspapers. And Herbert the Pervert would save his family's grass clippings and hide the big bags behind his dog house until the big day arrived. My job was to coordinate the activities and smooth it over with everyone's parents so that we'd all have permission to camp out in my back yard that night.
Over the next week, the Ant and I made several post-sunset excursions from our house to the Pearce's and back again. We searched for the most effective route -- was there a route by which we could we stay hidden by shrubbery, avoid barking dogs, and not have to climb too many fences? We made maps and gave copies to each kid.
We rode our bikes past the Pearces several times, all under the pretext of going over to the elementary school playground to see how far our riderless bikes would travel if we got going really fast and then released the bikes by grabbing onto the playground horizontal bars as we went under. But we were really scoping out the best places to hide if we saw a car coming.
We made out a timetable. We assigned specific trees to each kid, with a specific number of TP rolls per tree. We plotted exactly the best way to handle the newspaper and grass clippings. We made sure everyone knew who would be carrying the duct tape if it was needed for attachment of the booby traps.
Halloween came. We participated in the usual trick-or-treat activities with our families, and then gathered in the back yard to pitch our pup tents. Each kid arrived, wearing the darkest clothing they had. We intended to sleep until 1:00am, which was the time when we figured the fewest observers would be out and about. But we couldn't sleep. So we talked about girls and how much we'd all like to actually befriend one -- and how impossibly distant that goal seemed to be. (Well, except Herbert the Pervert -- he always seemed to do all right with the girls. But if he knew the secret, he wasn't sharing it with us. And we sure couldn't figure it out by watching him.)
The annointed hour arrived. Smearing dirt on our faces, we crept from our makeshift campground and tiptoed along our behind-the-bushes attack route. We had to trade off dragging the grass bags, and Kass kept wanting to turn on his flashlight, causing frequent hisses of "turn that damn thing off, Kass!". But otherwise, it went exactly according to plan.
It was a thing of beauty. There is something almost lyrical about a well-thrown roll of toilet paper arching up over a grand cottonwood tree. And the clocklike precision with which each roll was recovered and re-thrown brought tears of pride to my eyes. It took about 30 minutes of rapid but quiet activity, which included two whispered "car!" warnings which caused an immediate dissolving into the bushes. At the end, every door handle on their house and car was booby-trapped. Every tree was smothered in white. Every window on the house was covered with newspaper so no one could see out in the morning. And the driveway was ankle deep in partially fermented grass.
We hated to leave. But the plan said to make it quick, so we did. We didn't sleep much when we got back to camp, though. If the high-five would've been invented then, we'd have been high-fiving until the sun came up.
Did this precision coordinated assault get me a date with Lisa? No. In fact, it was such a monstrous mess for their family to clean up that we all thought it wiser to remain hidden in anonymity. We even thought there was a possibility of lawsuits, juvenile hall, etc.
Oh, yes, I had set forth a mammoth juggernaut of well-oiled activity in honor of the fair maiden, but alas, she was never to know. Yes, I had much to learn about impressing women. Those stories are yet to come.
But I will leave you with one thought; I'm not sure what it means, though. But here it is: Lisa's brother Mike has been married to my sister now for over 25 years.
Makes ya think, doesn't it?
See ya. Terry
Before I stumbled across the Secrets to Success with Women, I had severe problems trying to figure out how to impress girls. The incident I am about to relate happened in my teens, long after most boys grow out of the "pulling her pigtails shows how much you like her" phase of affection display. By then, normal guys have discovered that talking to girls, paying attention to what she says, and letting her know that you like her work much better than random acts of cruelty. But I wasn't a normal guy.
The girl in question was Lisa Pearce. Very cute. Very sweet. Long dark hair, and a smile that would melt your heart. She had always been nice to me. We'd even spent some time together baking 4-layer cakes for her mom's birthday. I liked her a lot. But she was popular, and always had plenty of boyfriends hanging around. I had never given her any reason to think that I liked her.
I wanted to do something to get her attention. Send her a card? No, too stupid. Buy her flowers? No, too gay. Talk to her as if we could possibly be friends? Yeah, right; I'm WAY too much of a nerd for that.
TP the crap out of her house? Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good plan.
At the next meeting of the neighborhood boy club, I suggested that we ought to think about a prank to pull for Halloween. Sure. Sounds good. Who should we get?
It helped that my sister was starting to hang around with Lisa's big brother, Mike. Mike was a big star on the Wrestling and Football teams, and loved to torment us younger guys. So when I suggested the Pearce's, it seemed a natural thing to do; it'd be revenge against Mike, and it would upset my sister. The fact that Lisa happened to live in the same house was just considered collateral damage.
We started planning weeks in advance. Normally, a good TP job consisted of a 4-roll pack of El-Cheapo toilet paper, and about 10 minutes worth of heaving the rolls toward the trees. We weren't planning to do a good job, though...we were going to do the Best Ever -- God, They'll Be Talking About It For Years job.
We made a shopping list. Lewis would buy 24 rolls of toilet paper. Kass would get a couple dozen gunpowder booby traps -- you know, the kind where you tie a string to the doorknob so that it pops when they open. The Ant would gather up a week's worth of newspapers. And Herbert the Pervert would save his family's grass clippings and hide the big bags behind his dog house until the big day arrived. My job was to coordinate the activities and smooth it over with everyone's parents so that we'd all have permission to camp out in my back yard that night.
Over the next week, the Ant and I made several post-sunset excursions from our house to the Pearce's and back again. We searched for the most effective route -- was there a route by which we could we stay hidden by shrubbery, avoid barking dogs, and not have to climb too many fences? We made maps and gave copies to each kid.
We rode our bikes past the Pearces several times, all under the pretext of going over to the elementary school playground to see how far our riderless bikes would travel if we got going really fast and then released the bikes by grabbing onto the playground horizontal bars as we went under. But we were really scoping out the best places to hide if we saw a car coming.
We made out a timetable. We assigned specific trees to each kid, with a specific number of TP rolls per tree. We plotted exactly the best way to handle the newspaper and grass clippings. We made sure everyone knew who would be carrying the duct tape if it was needed for attachment of the booby traps.
Halloween came. We participated in the usual trick-or-treat activities with our families, and then gathered in the back yard to pitch our pup tents. Each kid arrived, wearing the darkest clothing they had. We intended to sleep until 1:00am, which was the time when we figured the fewest observers would be out and about. But we couldn't sleep. So we talked about girls and how much we'd all like to actually befriend one -- and how impossibly distant that goal seemed to be. (Well, except Herbert the Pervert -- he always seemed to do all right with the girls. But if he knew the secret, he wasn't sharing it with us. And we sure couldn't figure it out by watching him.)
The annointed hour arrived. Smearing dirt on our faces, we crept from our makeshift campground and tiptoed along our behind-the-bushes attack route. We had to trade off dragging the grass bags, and Kass kept wanting to turn on his flashlight, causing frequent hisses of "turn that damn thing off, Kass!". But otherwise, it went exactly according to plan.
It was a thing of beauty. There is something almost lyrical about a well-thrown roll of toilet paper arching up over a grand cottonwood tree. And the clocklike precision with which each roll was recovered and re-thrown brought tears of pride to my eyes. It took about 30 minutes of rapid but quiet activity, which included two whispered "car!" warnings which caused an immediate dissolving into the bushes. At the end, every door handle on their house and car was booby-trapped. Every tree was smothered in white. Every window on the house was covered with newspaper so no one could see out in the morning. And the driveway was ankle deep in partially fermented grass.
We hated to leave. But the plan said to make it quick, so we did. We didn't sleep much when we got back to camp, though. If the high-five would've been invented then, we'd have been high-fiving until the sun came up.
Did this precision coordinated assault get me a date with Lisa? No. In fact, it was such a monstrous mess for their family to clean up that we all thought it wiser to remain hidden in anonymity. We even thought there was a possibility of lawsuits, juvenile hall, etc.
Oh, yes, I had set forth a mammoth juggernaut of well-oiled activity in honor of the fair maiden, but alas, she was never to know. Yes, I had much to learn about impressing women. Those stories are yet to come.
But I will leave you with one thought; I'm not sure what it means, though. But here it is: Lisa's brother Mike has been married to my sister now for over 25 years.
Makes ya think, doesn't it?
See ya. Terry
Monday, October 28, 2002
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.performancepress.com.
Creating a Halloween costume is more challenging for an adult. When you're a kid, all you're doing in your costume is trying to scam some food from local shopkeeps and neighboring grandmas. Unless you're one of those weiner kids who's mom makes you a custom-tailored fairy outfit or something, you pick your costume from the bottom shelf of the crappola aisle at Walgreen's. If enough people have walked on it, you might even get a discount. Just choose something that's remotely cool and go for it. (Hint: Spiderman - cool. Pikachu - not cool.)
As an adult, you have the added pressure of being expected to put serious thought and creativity into it. At adult parties, you may even achieve recognition (or even money) for a wondrous costume that displays your brilliance and craftsmanship for all to see.
My crowning achievement in costumery came the year I dressed as the Incredible Hulk. I actually had a hulk-skin colored green shirt (hey, gimme a break, it was the 80s) and a full face latex Hulk-mask. I stuffed my clothing with wadded up socks to simulate Ferrigno-esque mass, and slathered green makeup upon every exposed bit of skin. Grunting incoherently, I managed to lurk around the party for a couple of hours without being recognized by anyone. I couldn't eat or drink because of the mask, of course, but the point was that it was a great costume.
It was even worth the couple of days I spent feeling nauseous from the after effects of breathing latex mask fumes.
The next year, I was not so successful. Due to the rising popularity of Bill Gates and the new American Nerd Power Structure, I decided to dress as a geek. Having spent many years as a dateless dweeb, I had most of the accessories close at hand. Broken taped thick glasses, pocket protectors with engineering pencils, pants that rode up way too high, white socks with thoroughly demoralized elastic, etc. The only problem I had was that I'd recently donated the last of my Brylcreem to Goodwill, so I had nothing with which to oil up the ol' hairdo. Frantically searching my apartment as party time drew near, I finally settled on Wesson Oil for my hair treatment. It looked great. I was one seriously hygiene-challenged dork boy.
It wasn't until I got to the party that I realized my mistake. The oil didn't want to stay localized within my follicles. It wanted to dribble down into my ears, eyes, and (shudder) the back of my neck. Within 20 minutes, I was a streaky, kitchen-scented mess. Of course, that's when the party's hosts decided we'd play the "wrap the mummy" game.
We each found a partner and then were timed to see how long it would take to wrap the other person head-to-toe in toilet paper. And not the scratchy kind of TP they use in the school gym toilets, either -- but the soft and absorbent kind that old pervert grocery store clerks like to fondle. Within minutes, I was covered in tattered oily toilet paper. I felt like I was the wick of a human Malotov Cocktail, and began to avoid anyone who was smoking.
The paper sucked the oil from my hair and evenly transferred it to every square inch of my clothing. Now I couldn't even drive home without staining the pristine two-tone upgraded upholstery in my brand new Pinto. The clothing was no great loss, but the rest of the evening will not be shown in my personal experience highlight reel, that's for sure.
The next year was not quite such a disaster, but it was still enough to make me seriously re-think this whole costume-party-effort thing. My date was going as Oprah Winfrey. So I applied a little "hideous acid burn - guaranteed to horrify" makeup, slipped a white plastic mask over my face, and donned a madman's cape (OK, so it was a vampire cape, but what's the difference?). I spent the next few hours lurking around my date, humming ominous and eerie classical music riffs and trying to look as if I might pluck her up and carry her off to the catacombs. I thought it was a clever bit, but nobody got it. One after another they'd come up and declare that I was a decent Phantom of the Opera, but nothing special. And I'd scream at them, "No, you Moron! -- I'm Phantom of the OPRAH!"
Some people just don't appreciate the creative genius. That was the last costume party I've been invited to. Heavy sigh.
See ya.
Creating a Halloween costume is more challenging for an adult. When you're a kid, all you're doing in your costume is trying to scam some food from local shopkeeps and neighboring grandmas. Unless you're one of those weiner kids who's mom makes you a custom-tailored fairy outfit or something, you pick your costume from the bottom shelf of the crappola aisle at Walgreen's. If enough people have walked on it, you might even get a discount. Just choose something that's remotely cool and go for it. (Hint: Spiderman - cool. Pikachu - not cool.)
As an adult, you have the added pressure of being expected to put serious thought and creativity into it. At adult parties, you may even achieve recognition (or even money) for a wondrous costume that displays your brilliance and craftsmanship for all to see.
My crowning achievement in costumery came the year I dressed as the Incredible Hulk. I actually had a hulk-skin colored green shirt (hey, gimme a break, it was the 80s) and a full face latex Hulk-mask. I stuffed my clothing with wadded up socks to simulate Ferrigno-esque mass, and slathered green makeup upon every exposed bit of skin. Grunting incoherently, I managed to lurk around the party for a couple of hours without being recognized by anyone. I couldn't eat or drink because of the mask, of course, but the point was that it was a great costume.
It was even worth the couple of days I spent feeling nauseous from the after effects of breathing latex mask fumes.
The next year, I was not so successful. Due to the rising popularity of Bill Gates and the new American Nerd Power Structure, I decided to dress as a geek. Having spent many years as a dateless dweeb, I had most of the accessories close at hand. Broken taped thick glasses, pocket protectors with engineering pencils, pants that rode up way too high, white socks with thoroughly demoralized elastic, etc. The only problem I had was that I'd recently donated the last of my Brylcreem to Goodwill, so I had nothing with which to oil up the ol' hairdo. Frantically searching my apartment as party time drew near, I finally settled on Wesson Oil for my hair treatment. It looked great. I was one seriously hygiene-challenged dork boy.
It wasn't until I got to the party that I realized my mistake. The oil didn't want to stay localized within my follicles. It wanted to dribble down into my ears, eyes, and (shudder) the back of my neck. Within 20 minutes, I was a streaky, kitchen-scented mess. Of course, that's when the party's hosts decided we'd play the "wrap the mummy" game.
We each found a partner and then were timed to see how long it would take to wrap the other person head-to-toe in toilet paper. And not the scratchy kind of TP they use in the school gym toilets, either -- but the soft and absorbent kind that old pervert grocery store clerks like to fondle. Within minutes, I was covered in tattered oily toilet paper. I felt like I was the wick of a human Malotov Cocktail, and began to avoid anyone who was smoking.
The paper sucked the oil from my hair and evenly transferred it to every square inch of my clothing. Now I couldn't even drive home without staining the pristine two-tone upgraded upholstery in my brand new Pinto. The clothing was no great loss, but the rest of the evening will not be shown in my personal experience highlight reel, that's for sure.
The next year was not quite such a disaster, but it was still enough to make me seriously re-think this whole costume-party-effort thing. My date was going as Oprah Winfrey. So I applied a little "hideous acid burn - guaranteed to horrify" makeup, slipped a white plastic mask over my face, and donned a madman's cape (OK, so it was a vampire cape, but what's the difference?). I spent the next few hours lurking around my date, humming ominous and eerie classical music riffs and trying to look as if I might pluck her up and carry her off to the catacombs. I thought it was a clever bit, but nobody got it. One after another they'd come up and declare that I was a decent Phantom of the Opera, but nothing special. And I'd scream at them, "No, you Moron! -- I'm Phantom of the OPRAH!"
Some people just don't appreciate the creative genius. That was the last costume party I've been invited to. Heavy sigh.
See ya.
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.performancepress.com.
My favorite halloween costume was Zorro. I was probably 7 or 8 years old, and the Guy Williams TV show was still being shown in reruns. The costume had a really cool cape (made of some highly flammable toxic polymer) and one of those cheesy plastic masks that cover your whole face and end up with snot all over the inside because you can't ever get the nose holes situated quite right. This particular mask imitated good ol' Guy (who later played the dad on that stupid show about the obnoxious family that was lost in space...what was that program called?). The artist must've created the design from a photo when Williams was posing for a publicity photo while wearing shoes that were two sizes too small -- cuz the grin on the mask had plenty of teeth, but none of Zorro's dash. It was closer to constipation than to swashbuckling.
The mask also had half a hat molded right into the plastic. From straight in front, I'm sure I'd have struck terror into the heart of the evil Alcalde, but from the side I looked like a big-eared crew-cut kid with a tiny strand of elastic alien tentacle attaching this hideous misshapen blob to my face. My swashbuckle factor was also decreased by the fact that I kept bumping into things that I couldn't see through the tiny snot-covered eyeholes.
But the costume was still totally cool -- because it came with a real Zorro sword. No, not a razor sharp length of steel that could put someone's eye out, but a long black dowel stick with a lovingly crafted hilt made of 100% "break-o-matic" crappy plastic. Oh, sure, you could put someone's eye out with this stick, but that isn't what made it cool. It was cool because it had a chalk-holder built into the end. Thus, I was able to leave the mark of Zorro thoughout the neighborhood -- wherever the downtrodden were being repressed. Zip zip zip -- ha HA! A magnificent white "Z" on the sidewalk. Zip zip zip -- another on the side of the garage. (My dad'll make me clean it up later, but there's no time to think such thoughts now...El Zorro is afoot!)
THAT was a fun Halloween! "Hand over your candy or be slashed with chalk marks!" Just like the original Zorro, I took from the rich and gave to the, er, I mean I took from the rich and ate until my belly was full of Butterfingers, Three Musketeers, and Candy Corns. (I did have the charity to donate the carameled apples and popcorn balls to the underpriviledged -- my sister -- cuz who wants to fill up on stuff that might actually have a valid nutritional component?)
Unfortunately, my chalk-stick sword disappeared shortly thereafter. I have no evidence, but my theory is that a half dozen of the local mothers dropped by after my bedtime and threatened my parents with Neighborhood Justice if my cruel weapon of vengeance was not surrendered. Cursed cowards that they were, my parents gave in. The neighborhood no longer lived in fear of waking up to find chalk marks laughing in the face of crosswalk signs and fire hydrants. And to make things worse, I accidentally sat on my cheap plastic mask and split it right through Guy Williams' bicuspids.
For the next few Halloweens, I sequentially mutated into your standard skeleton, black cat, six-gun sheriff, and freightyard hobo. Each successive costume became less elaborate. By the time I was a hobo, my preparation consisted of wearing my holiest pants, putting on a moth-eaten stocking cap, and looking for shoe polish to rub on my chin to create the appearance of a three-day beard. I couldn't find any shoe polish, so I smeared my jaw with Elmer's glue and emptied the pepper shaker over my face. It was actually a pretty good look...and with my constant sneezing I'm sure that the homeowners I visited were convinced not only that I was a real hobo, but that I was in the final stages of consumptive pneumonia and would likely expire at any moment. "Here, take your candy and move on quickly. We don't want any corpses rotting in the flowerbeds...it would clash with the freshly-planted marigolds."
My last effort at trick or treating took place when I was in high school. I pulled my cap down over my eyes so no one could tell how old I was. I shrieked "Trick or Treat" in my best imitation of a grade-school falsetto, and sold the concept by getting down on my knees to appear to be of the appropriate diminutive stature. It worked...I actually received candy! I couldn't believe I had actually fooled anyone.
Looking back from my current level of wisdom and maturity, I now understand that no one could've possibly been fooled. They gave me candy because they thought I was probably dangerously insane, and a handful of rock-hard Bit-O-Honey was a small price to pay to get the masked weirdo to move on. I'm probably lucky they didn't release the hounds to rend me limb from limb. Of course, that would've caused another corpse-in-the-marigolds problem, so I suppose it made more sense to just cough up the sweets.
In the next posting, I'll talk about going to costume parties as an adult. Scary stuff. See ya.
My favorite halloween costume was Zorro. I was probably 7 or 8 years old, and the Guy Williams TV show was still being shown in reruns. The costume had a really cool cape (made of some highly flammable toxic polymer) and one of those cheesy plastic masks that cover your whole face and end up with snot all over the inside because you can't ever get the nose holes situated quite right. This particular mask imitated good ol' Guy (who later played the dad on that stupid show about the obnoxious family that was lost in space...what was that program called?). The artist must've created the design from a photo when Williams was posing for a publicity photo while wearing shoes that were two sizes too small -- cuz the grin on the mask had plenty of teeth, but none of Zorro's dash. It was closer to constipation than to swashbuckling.
The mask also had half a hat molded right into the plastic. From straight in front, I'm sure I'd have struck terror into the heart of the evil Alcalde, but from the side I looked like a big-eared crew-cut kid with a tiny strand of elastic alien tentacle attaching this hideous misshapen blob to my face. My swashbuckle factor was also decreased by the fact that I kept bumping into things that I couldn't see through the tiny snot-covered eyeholes.
But the costume was still totally cool -- because it came with a real Zorro sword. No, not a razor sharp length of steel that could put someone's eye out, but a long black dowel stick with a lovingly crafted hilt made of 100% "break-o-matic" crappy plastic. Oh, sure, you could put someone's eye out with this stick, but that isn't what made it cool. It was cool because it had a chalk-holder built into the end. Thus, I was able to leave the mark of Zorro thoughout the neighborhood -- wherever the downtrodden were being repressed. Zip zip zip -- ha HA! A magnificent white "Z" on the sidewalk. Zip zip zip -- another on the side of the garage. (My dad'll make me clean it up later, but there's no time to think such thoughts now...El Zorro is afoot!)
THAT was a fun Halloween! "Hand over your candy or be slashed with chalk marks!" Just like the original Zorro, I took from the rich and gave to the, er, I mean I took from the rich and ate until my belly was full of Butterfingers, Three Musketeers, and Candy Corns. (I did have the charity to donate the carameled apples and popcorn balls to the underpriviledged -- my sister -- cuz who wants to fill up on stuff that might actually have a valid nutritional component?)
Unfortunately, my chalk-stick sword disappeared shortly thereafter. I have no evidence, but my theory is that a half dozen of the local mothers dropped by after my bedtime and threatened my parents with Neighborhood Justice if my cruel weapon of vengeance was not surrendered. Cursed cowards that they were, my parents gave in. The neighborhood no longer lived in fear of waking up to find chalk marks laughing in the face of crosswalk signs and fire hydrants. And to make things worse, I accidentally sat on my cheap plastic mask and split it right through Guy Williams' bicuspids.
For the next few Halloweens, I sequentially mutated into your standard skeleton, black cat, six-gun sheriff, and freightyard hobo. Each successive costume became less elaborate. By the time I was a hobo, my preparation consisted of wearing my holiest pants, putting on a moth-eaten stocking cap, and looking for shoe polish to rub on my chin to create the appearance of a three-day beard. I couldn't find any shoe polish, so I smeared my jaw with Elmer's glue and emptied the pepper shaker over my face. It was actually a pretty good look...and with my constant sneezing I'm sure that the homeowners I visited were convinced not only that I was a real hobo, but that I was in the final stages of consumptive pneumonia and would likely expire at any moment. "Here, take your candy and move on quickly. We don't want any corpses rotting in the flowerbeds...it would clash with the freshly-planted marigolds."
My last effort at trick or treating took place when I was in high school. I pulled my cap down over my eyes so no one could tell how old I was. I shrieked "Trick or Treat" in my best imitation of a grade-school falsetto, and sold the concept by getting down on my knees to appear to be of the appropriate diminutive stature. It worked...I actually received candy! I couldn't believe I had actually fooled anyone.
Looking back from my current level of wisdom and maturity, I now understand that no one could've possibly been fooled. They gave me candy because they thought I was probably dangerously insane, and a handful of rock-hard Bit-O-Honey was a small price to pay to get the masked weirdo to move on. I'm probably lucky they didn't release the hounds to rend me limb from limb. Of course, that would've caused another corpse-in-the-marigolds problem, so I suppose it made more sense to just cough up the sweets.
In the next posting, I'll talk about going to costume parties as an adult. Scary stuff. See ya.
