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?