Tuesday, October 5, 2010

A Three-Legged Wonder


Various Halloween scenes flee flood the remembrance of my childhood past. There were years that were scary and others scream-laugh funny.

As an adult, I can still gag smile at the antics of my friends and family.
My mother is a clothing designer by trade. So Halloween in our house consisted of home-made costumes. In my recollection, there was only one year in which I wore a costume my mother didn’t entirely make for me.

Nothing against my in-house designer's imagination—all her guises were works of art—but forcing helping to create my own costume made it the best Halloween ever.

My best friend, Kelley, and I were eight years old. Her mom provided us with tempera paints and thick brushes, along with two paper grocery sacks.

We decided to be a two-headed monster. This consisted of painting our "heads" on the sacks and having my mother sew a shirt and three-legged pants large enough to house two kids.

It took us almost a whole week of practice, walking side by side with our inside legs tied together, to find our cadence beat. And then…the big night. Halloween.

We dressed at my house and preened for pictures. Hobbled to her house for more pictures. With plastic pumpkin buckets in hand, we set off.
And promptly fell down her front stairs, ripping the shirt and tearing the pant seam. How the paper sacks stayed intact, I'll never know. I was crying, Kelley was screaming, her mom was laughing, and their damn dog attacked my pumpkin bucket.

We made our rounds through the neighborhood that night, a two headed, three-legged, limping monster.

I haven't seen Kelley since 1989, but I keep in touch with her mother. She and I have groaned laughed over my favorite Halloween many times over the years.

Everyone has a Halloween story. What's yours?

9 comments:

Brenda said...

LOL, Sorry I'm laughing, but the picture in my head is funny. I'm glad you weren't hurt.

Tabitha Blake said...

I agree with brenda that was funny. But I am sure at the time it was traumatic. Great blog!

Sheri Fredricks said...

Thanks for sharing my laugh. It was funny to re-tell at school later. Now I get to laugh at my kids!

Martha Ramirez said...

Too funny!!How cute!! Sorry I have no memories like that to share:)

D'Ann said...

Very funny!
When I was a kid, my mother wouldn't let us trick or treat, so no costumes and no candy!
I made up for it with my daughter, though. I made every costume for years, and they were great!

Sheri Fredricks said...

If you think about it, trick or treating is having our kids do everything we've taught them NOT to do!

Unknown said...

OMG, we ued to go into a funeral parlor in the neighborhood. Our family's personal undertaker. So flippin' scary. Mr. Nulty used to be in a casket and you'd have to go up and get your candy. Trick, the room would be full of caskets, you never knew which one!

Anytime I am there for a funeral, that's what I think of. Candy. LOL.

susan said...

Enjoyed your story so much I can see why you never forgot it. I was Little Red Riding Hood for years..my mom made my outfit and kept adding as I got bigger..I think it put a bad look on the story line itself for me as she was not my favorite person when I grew up. It must had left an impack on me. ha ha susan L

Sheri Fredricks said...

OMG, Charli! I had a friend whose family had a funeral parlor business too! I refused to go "down below" at Halloween. They'd have a haunted house and make people walk over pillows (dead people) and touch cold spaghetti (brains). How funny! But, that's for another blog I suppose. I'll title it, "How we love to scar our children's psyche."

Susan: Lucky you - it was a girl's costume! I had an older brother, not so cute... Thank you for your comment. Still have that Little Red outfit around?? LOL!