Stick It

My family has never been much for putting stickers of any kind on our cars. My father loved Ireland, and took four vacations there. He had the smallest escutcheon with “Ireland” across the top, and the colors of the Irish flag along the bottom on the back of an MG he owned when I was a teenager, but that was the extent to which we displayed our political views, hobbies, or passions, on our cars. My parents thought bumper stickers were tacky, and refused to buy them. Other people are not so reluctant, I know.

Because of my parents’ opinions, the need to share personal information via stickers on one’s automobile is one I don’t really understand, and the more personal the information, the stranger it seems. Thoughts that people would hesitate to share at a cocktail party are fair game on the back of a car. Who would say to the face of someone to whom they’ve just been introduced that their pet has a greater level of intelligence than the new acquaintance’s child? Or, “So nice to meet you! By the way, if you don’t like the way I drive, you can dial 1-800-EAT-SHIT.”

Political sentiments are often shared via car. Where I live most of the political bumper stickers are left leaning, or have an environmentalist flavor to them. You’re far more likely to see an Obama sticker hanging out with one that declares, “No Farms No Food” than you are to see someone displaying their support for the NRA. Not that Republicans are nonexistent, just outnumbered. Political bumper stickers seem vaguely passive-aggressive to me. They force you to accept the opinion of the driver without having any means of response, or form of dialog. I guess you could walk up to someone in the parking lot at the dry cleaner and call them on their political beliefs as related via their bumper, if you were that passionate about it.

On the other hand, the content of some aims to be lighthearted and fun, even if it can be confusing. The first time I saw one of those black and white oval stickers with OBX on it, I couldn’t figure out which European country that would be. The original purpose of those labels was to designate the car’s country of origin. Now they tell everyone where you went on vacation, or how far you can run, which is useful information to have about total strangers.

Lots of people let you know how many family members they have by putting stickers on the rear window, each sticker representing one person. This is so helpful, because often in traffic I gaze at the rear window of the car in front of me and think, “I wonder how many people are in their family. How many kids to do they have? I wish there was a way for me to know this.” The most popular ones here are Disney families, but I’ve seen both zombies and Star Wars characters, too. They even have cat and dog stickers you can buy to advertise how many pets you have. Of course then you have the complication of what to do if you lose a pet. I guess you just have to replace it right away to keep the count accurate.

There’s an SUV I often see in the parking lot of my local grocery store that gets very specific in terms of who’s in the vehicle. Each window is labeled with the name of—I assume—the person who most commonly rides in that seat. I’m not sure what the purpose of this is. Is it like an airplane, where each seat is assigned to a person, and if the plane goes down we figure that Mr. Williams was in seat 14B, so the remains in the vicinity of that seat are likely to be his? The names are also very unusual ones, spelled with lots of vowels and drawn out syllables: Aleezeeya and Kayara, and even what I assume are the dogs have their names on their section of the car (either that or they have children named Neemer and Bonzey who are required to ride in what we always called “the way back,” and who probably get teased at school for having really odd names).

The form of car embellishment that seems strangest to me is the “In Memoriam” stickers. These are obviously custom made, and say things like “In Memory of Wilbur Dwayne Hinkley May 12, 1981 – August 7, 2001.” They’re generally stuck on the back window of something like a Chevy Bronco or a Ford Mustang. What I can’t figure out is what part is being dedicated to the deceased person. When something is marked as “in memory of” it’s the inscribed object that’s supposed to be dedicated to that person’s memory, like a park bench, or the Lincoln Memorial. So if the sticker is in the window, is it the car as a whole that’s a memorial, a rolling tribute to the deceased? Is it the rear window? Or is it just the sticker?

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, of course, and some people love to be able to express their thoughts via their bumpers. I suppose it makes them feel that their viewpoint is being respected, or at least recognized. Maybe to express my position I need a bumper sticker that says, “I don't do bumper stickers."

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Bad Sport

I’m a terrible sports mom. I don’t mean I’m not supportive of my children in their athletic endeavors. I am—I want them to get good exercise, do well and be proud of themselves, understand what it means to be part of a team, and I want them to have fun. After the game we talk about what they did well, how they could improve, and how important it is that everyone played well, not just if the team won or lost. I’m just terrible at the during-the-actual-event stuff.

In the first place, I have no understanding whatsoever of the details of the rules of any sport. For all I know, you have to say “Mother, May I?” before you throw the ball back into play in soccer, and if the runner in baseball has his fingers crossed when he gets tagged, is he actually out? A lot of this is because I find sports boring as shit and don’t follow any of them. Plus I never participated in organized sports as a child. I took gymnastics once for about six weeks, and I rode horses all through high school, but neither of those involved fouls or outs or goals or anything. So things happen on the field or the court, and I’m not sure if they’re good or bad. Or if they matter at all. You’d think by now I’d get it, and to an extent I do (you can’t watch 8000+ hours of soccer without figuring out a little of what the hell’s going on), but the finer points of every game escape me.

I’m also not one of your gung ho sports mommies. I don’t stand on the sidelines and yell, “Go, Badgers!” or “Stay with it!” or “Nice D!” (which, it took me a really long time to figure out, was not one mom calling to another on the other side of the field with a compliment about her recent breast augmentation, but means, “Nice defense”). Shit I can barely remember which predatory animal my kids’ teams are named after, much less be expected to cheer and shout and generally make an ass of myself in their support. Besides, I’m just as likely to get the team name wrong (“Go Wolves! I mean…Cougars! I mean…Wildcats! Whatever!”). So you expect me to be able to recognize when they switch from playing offense to playing defense? I clap when my child’s team does something good (I know it’s his team, and I know it’s something good based on the reactions of the other, more enthusiastic parents of his team mates around me). I’m just not one for making a spectacle of myself. Besides, I never want to be that parent screaming in a voice that would crack a mirror while all the other parents stand around and roll their eyes at each other, wishing that parent would shut the fuck up.

 

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Because I have no concept of how to play…any sport, really, I’m also never going to be that parent yelling instructions to every kid on the team. You know the one I mean—usually a dad (but I’ve heard moms who do it) who wants to tell not only his or her kid, but all of the kids the best time to pass, how fast to run, when to shoot. And they do it through the whole fucking game. I can’t believe the kids even hear these instructions, much less think to act on them. I’ve never figured out why these assholes don’t sign up to be the coach, if they know so much. Or, you know, shut up. Either one is fine with me.

I have a further confession that may brand me as a complete asshole, but I have to say this: I actually don’t care about the performance of any kid but my own. If your Connor or Madison plays well, that’s great. I’m happy for you. But don’t expect gushing congratulations from me on the goal/run/out s/he was part of. Because let’s be honest, if my kid wasn’t part of it, I probably wasn’t watching. The best you’re likely to hear is “Wow, Connor/Madison played a great game!”  I don’t mean that maliciously. It’s not unkindness on my part, it’s complete apathy. I really only pay attention to what’s going on when my kid is participating. The rest of the time I’m reading my book or catching up on Twitter (read: writing tweets about how annoying all the hyper enthusiastic screaming sports parents are and/or how fucking uncomfortable the bleachers are, and that my butt is now asleep. Because Twitter cares very deeply about my butt. It told me it did).

It also seems like most sports events are held either first thing in the morning, or during cocktail hour. I am a morning person—7 a.m. is sleeping way in for me, and always has been—but that doesn’t mean that I want to hop out of bed and scurry off to some playing field or other. I like to read, write, maybe watch a little Amazon Prime, have a Diet Coke. You know, relax. The only thing that would make it acceptable for them to schedule some damned game or other at 9 a.m. on a Saturday is if the concession stand sold Bloody Marys. And I can assure the local Little League that parents would stop grumbling about games at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday if they could get a beer while they watched their kid miss every catch that was thrown to them for 90 minutes straight.

I’m sure the other parents think I’m a complete slacker, too, because I never volunteer to be scorekeeper, or wrangle equipment or anything. I volunteered in the snack shack exactly once, and that was one of the biggest nightmares I’ve experienced since I left the food service industry 25 years ago. A tip: if you’re forced to work the snack shack, sign up for the first shift of the day (assuming this is 9 a.m. or so). If your team’s snack shack serves anything remotely resembling real food, under no circumstances should you sign up to work between 11 and 2. You will be serving the “lunch crowd” consisting of 185 starving nine year olds whose parents were too busy running from one event to another to get them lunch, and agreed to get the kid a hot dog (and some fries and a pretzel and three Laffy Taffys and a Kit Kat and a Gatorade and a bottle of water). The day I did it many of the Little League teams were having “end of season” cookouts, so the pressure was reduced, but even with that I still left the snack shack smelling like a deep fat fryer, having flashback nightmares to my days working in a carry out serving barbeque sandwiches and tuna melts to construction workers.

So between not getting it, not caring about 80% of what happens on the field, and being perceived as not jumping in to do my part, I am a horrible sports mom. I’m sure other parents see me sitting there on the sideline with my magazine, or playing with my phone, and think, “You’re what’s wrong with parents today.” And they may be right, but I’d rather have them judge me as a bad sports parent (since they’re not entirely wrong) than have them rolling their eyes, wishing I’d shut up for just two seconds.

(Not) Playing the Field

We’re going to be out of town for a couple of days next weekend, and my kids will miss a day of school. They’re bummed out because it’s “Field Day” they’ll be missing. “Aw, man, I LOVE Field Day!” my daughter announced at dinner last night when it became clear what would be happening at school the day they would be out. I’m now trying to figure out whose kids these are. They can’t be mine, because they would surely have inherited my loathing of Field Day. Right? (Note: in spite of this, they are mine.)

As an adult, there are things I dislike about being involved with school, most notably the Science Fair and the Carnival. When I was a kid, my school didn’t have Science Fairs (although I’m sure I would have hated them if we had), and I vaguely remember one sort of Carnival-esque thing, but it wasn’t the run around screaming-toss beanbags in a clown’s mouth-get a bag full of cheap plastic shit toys that will clog the vacuum in three weeks kind of affair that my kids’ school has. All I remember about it is that I somehow ended up doing magic tricks for small groups of parents that drifted by from time to time. I was stationed at a table in a hallway and had evidently volunteered to do this. That’s it—wine (and 33 years) has wiped out the rest of that memory. But we had Field Day, and boy did I hate it. In fact, on a list of things I didn’t like about school, Field Day must be about five of them. It doesn’t bother me as an adult, because I don’t have to participate in my kids’ Field Day, or try find a plausible excuse to miss it (and “plausible” was a relative term—I made up some pretty unbelievable shit trying to get out of it in my day).

As you may have gathered if you’re familiar with my rant about camping, I’m not outdoorsy. And although it’s not necessarily a given, in my case not being outdoorsy and not being athletic are parts of one another in the Venn diagram of Things That Totally Suck In My Opinion. In the first place, most sports are played outside. In the second place, as a normal human being, when someone throws something at me, my instinct is to duck, not stick out my hand and try to catch whatever the fuck they threw at me. And to address the obvious question (“Yeah, but wouldn’t you rather have done Field Day shit and gotten to miss class?”) the answer is, actually, hell no. The only thing worse than the academic part of school was the athletic part of school. If they had said, “You can do Field Day, or go sit in the library and read all day,” the wake that followed me as I raced down the hall to the library would have pulled everything off the walls and sent it swirling against the lockers in a tornado of homeroom announcements and “Just Say No to Drugs” posters.

I don’t even remember that much about Field Day (see wine and passage of time, above), but what I do remember about it was excruciating. It was always at the end of the school year, of course. I’m sure this had to do with the fact that they were basically running out of shit to teach us (plus the teachers were as eager for summer vacation as we were, maybe more) so they declared Field Day and it was a chance for the teachers to not have to do a lesson plan and try to teach something to a bunch of twelve year olds who were already checked out and anticipating spending their mornings watching reruns of “Gilligan’s Island” and “I Dream of Jeannie” before they went to the pool for the rest of the day.

I grew up on the East coast, and naturally the day of Field Day was always the first really hot day of almost-summer. The activities were held on playing fields that were twelve miles from the nearest tree, so there was no shade. This was long before concerns about things like sunscreen (we called it “sun tan lotion” of course, which only serves to underscore the fact that it wasn’t about protection, but about cosmetics) and hydration (no one had a “water bottle” in those days, and there was no bottled water, and the school administration apparently didn’t give a shit if we all passed out from heat stroke). As a child, I was often mistaken for Casper the Friendly Ghost, so lacking in pigmentation was I. As a result, I’m very sensitive to excessive exposure to heat. So right there I’m not all that excited about this whole thing.

And then they wanted us to run. I don’t remember anything we did at Field Day other than sprint up and down the field. The 100 yard dash, the 500 yard dash, the 1000 yard dash, the 4,927 yard dash or whatever the fuck. I suppose they had other activities, but I can’t recall what they were. I think we actually signed up for stuff in advance, so it’s very possible I just picked the things that required the least coordination. Of course, it’s impossible to have enough activities going at once to keep 250 kids occupied the whole time, so we spent a lot of time standing around waiting for shit to happen.

Out in a field for four or five hours, with the sun blazing down and with nothing to drink, waiting to get to run a few hundred yards so I could go stand around some more…I can’t quite put my finger on what about this I found so abhorrent.

The logical strategy was to find ways to get out of it. I did my damndest. If I had put as much effort into my schoolwork over the course of the year as I did in coming up with reasons I couldn’t participate in Field Day in the week before it happened, I’d have been a Rhodes Scholar. My first encounter with Field Day was in fourth grade. When the guidelines were explained to me, I immediately knew that this was something in which I would be gracefully declining to participate. Just about that time, I was starting orthodontic treatment. I had some little bits of wire between a few of my molars to make room for some bands they’d be putting on shortly. The pressure these were exerting on my teeth was causing them to ache, therefore I was so sorry, but it seemed to me it would be unwise for me to participate in this “Field Day” thingie.

That one was a failure. I realized that in future years, I was going to have to come up with something better. A doctor’s appointment or a broken bone would have been a godsend, but I was never that lucky. Probably because in order to break a bone, you had to be remotely athletic and perform potentially risky acts that could result in bone breakage. About the most dangerous injury I was ever likely to sustain was a severe paper cut, or perhaps a pinched finger from getting it caught in the hinge of my Barbie carrying case.

I tried a lot of different things, but the one that probably worked the best over the years was simply going to the bathroom, and never going back to the field. That probably wouldn’t fly these days—the schools are much more vigilant about things like where kids are, and visitors to the school buildings and such. But thirty years ago it was no problem. The trick was, I had to pretend enthusiasm up to the point where I allegedly needed to use the restroom. That was kind of challenging for me, since it wasn’t exactly a secret that I hated gym class and anything that resembled it even slightly.

Our school colors were blue and white, and when you enrolled, you were assigned a color, which was your “team” for the rest of your school career. On Field Day, success in events was rewarded with “points” for your team. The team with the most points at the end of the day was the winner. There was a lot of screaming about “GO BLUE!” and “GO WHITE!” Really, I always thought, who gives a shit? We’re not running for Congress here. It’s not like “winning” gets you anything tangible or important. In fact, about the only thing I can think of that you “got” was that if your team won, you got to say “Ha ha! We won at Field Day!” to anyone on the losing team for the next ten days until school was out for the summer, and everyone forgot about the whole thing until the next year on Field Day. But in order to make it seem like I cared, so I could be struck with such an unfortunate need to go to the restroom about 45 minutes into the whole stupid thing, I had to participate in the inane and pointless screaming. (I was a Blue, for the record.)

My memory of all this nonsense ends by about tenth grade. I don’t know if they didn’t force the older kids to participate, or if I managed to convince my mother to just let me stay home “sick” on Field Day day. Given how much my mother also hated physical exertion, I’ve always been a bit surprised by the memory I have of her urging me to give it a go. I suspect she didn’t feel like she could let a ten year old stay home by herself all day while she and my dad were at work. I know she sympathized with my distaste for all things athletic, especially since her genes were probably where I got it.

I’m grateful that as an adult, the few times I’ve been exposed to something that had a hint of a “corporate Field Day,” it’s always been completely optional. Unlike in elementary school, there’s no shame in saying, “Yeah, not my thing,” or, “You know, I don’t do team sports,” or, “I’d rather perform my own hysterectomy with a rusty corkscrew” (depending on your level of enthusiasm, or lack thereof). Also, when you do team building activities in a corporate setting, there’s almost always alcohol provided. Having to yell, “GO BLUE!” with a glass of wine in my hand is way more tolerable than it was when I was fourteen and empty handed. Also I can walk away whenever I want and drive home and no one can stop me. It’s not always obvious, but there are some really kick ass things about being an adult. Not having to participate in Field Day may be at least two of them.

I Love Not Camping

I have a series of well-worn rants about camping that anyone who knows me is familiar with (and probably sick of). It starts with, I hate camping. Hate, as my mother always said, is a very strong word. In this case, I would argue, it’s not strong enough.

I am not a good camper, and I don’t want to be. My idea of roughing it is a hotel that doesn’t have room service. If by “camping” you mean a weekend at the Four Seasons, including spa treatments and complimentary all-you-can-drink champagne, put my name at the top of the list. If “camping” involves any of the following: tents, woods, bears, insects, lanterns, portable stoves, outdoor fires, dirt, trees, pay showers or toilets (or, god forbid, peeing in the woods and not showering at all) or sleeping bags, then you go on without me.

My mother was not a camper, nor her parents before her. I suppose at some point in our family history there were people who were camping sorts, mostly because if you go far enough back in history, life itself basically was camping, but I’m sure given the choice, they would have said, “Fuck this shit,” and happily moved into a three bedroom, two bath rambler (I come from a very practical family). But that's one of the things I don’t get about camping. Human beings have spent thousands of years developing things like indoor plumbing, leave-in conditioner, and the automatic ice maker just so we wouldn’t have to live in crude tents with no air conditioning and warm wine. Why abandon all that our species has worked so hard to achieve and return to what they were clearly trying to get away from?

Perhaps I just miss what’s supposed to be fun about camping. I’ve done it, and in my experience it involves packing up everything you need to survive for a couple of days in your car, driving it out into the wilderness somewhere far away from the nearest Starbucks or liquor store, unpacking it all, setting it all up to make it “like home,” hanging out in the woods for a couple of days with wild animals and bugs (some of whom consider you a menu item), then packing everything back up in your car, driving it all home, unpacking it all, and washing it because everything that goes into the woods for more than three and a half minutes gets fucking filthy.

What about any of that is fun?

And when you do go out there, there are so many things that you leave behind that just can't accompany you. The dish washer. The hot water heater. The refrigerator. A real mattress. I don’t know about you, but those are pretty key components of my daily existence.

Some friends of ours recently decided to buy an RV. The husband and the three boys think there’s nothing more fun than executing the steps I describe above, while the wife is a bit more lukewarm about it, but she decided that maybe an RV would make it slightly more enjoyable (she is such a fucking optimist). We went with them to the RV show to look around. Every single one of them was decorated in shades of brown and mauve (the RVs, not the friends). It’s like the people who choose the finishes for RVs have an endless supply of materials (and taste) from 1975. So not only do you have to, like, camp, you have to camp with ugliness. I’m convinced that Hell is not a single fiery inferno, but more like a series of rooms with different horrific experiences from this earthly life, and you go from one to another, experiencing them all, for all eternity. The interior of an RV will be one of those rooms.

I have friends who actually own something called a “fifth wheel” (I’m not entirely clear what this is, and really don’t want to know; I just know it’s some damned camper thing). She maintains that they’re “not really” camping because they have a bedroom, bathroom, and full working kitchen. So I have to ask the obvious question, why fucking bother? When we went to the RV show, for the right price, there were RVs with televisions, fireplaces, separate bedrooms, and full bathrooms. If your “camper” is so much like a home that being in it is like not even leaving home, then don’t. Every year before the “camping season” begins, my friend has to take stock of this trailer/camper thing and make sure she has enough things like dish soap, toilet paper, wine glasses (this is a friend of mine, remember) etc for the trips they’ll take. So she’s basically replicated her home kitchen in this thing. And they have to own a big ass pick up truck to pull it. This is so much more bullshit than I’m willing to endure, all just to go hang out in the dirty, buggy woods, or on some windy beach someplace with a million sand flies for company. She assures me I would adore it. She has grossly misread the situation.

All of this distaste for the idea of camping stems from the fact that I am what you would call indoorsy. I love to enjoy the outdoors. From the indoors. Through the window. Nothing makes me happier than a beautiful spring or fall day sitting in my house with the windows or French doors (or both) open. I don’t like being outside. Outside there are bugs and shit. Inside there are not (and if they come in, I can squash them. And I do). This rabid desire people have to be out of doors is just beyond me. If God had intended us to be outside all the time, he wouldn’t have given us the heat pump. And if God had intended me to camp, he wouldn’t have given us the concept of not camping.

(The title of this post is taken from Anne Taintor. If you haven't ever seen her stuff, I assume you're new here on planet Earth, but by all means go look around. She's a hoot.)

Halloween. Boo.

I know plenty of people disagree with me, but Halloween leaves me cold. Costumes, trick or treat, blah blah whatever. For the sake of my children, I try my best to hide this lack of enthusiasm. I buy fake spiders and plastic skeletons. I even throw a Halloween party, complete with pumpkin flinging trebuchet every year (my husband, who does like Halloween, built the trebuchet himself. I don't like Halloween, but even I have to admit that a life size trebuchet that can fling a pumpkin 300' is pretty badass).

My complete lack of interest is probably partly, if not entirely, fed by my own childhood experiences. My mom was a total washout in the costume department. I remember being about five things when I was a kid, all of them lame. The year I was seven it was so bad that I didn’t even have a costume, per se. She pulled out a blue tartan kilt and cape she’d bought me during a previous summer vacation to Bermuda and said, “There. You’re Mary, Queen of Scots.” Because I was kind of a weird kid, I knew who that was (sort of), but seriously—what the fuck?

The last year I recall actually even trick or treating at all was the year I was in 7^th grade. All the girls in my class (about 7 of us) spent the night at someone’s house and we didn’t so much go trick or treating, as go out and see what kind of trouble we could get in. Being the kind of kid I was, that wasn’t much, as it turned out. About the only thing of note that happened was when we were spraying Silly String on the playground at the local elementary school, and a flashlight beam came out of nowhere and pinned us. The guy behind it said, “Stop—police.” And my friend Sarah—for reasons that she has never been able to articulate—shot back, “Who you jivin’?” and the cop replied, “I ain’t jivin’.” Oh shit.

Turned out they were looking for kids who were actually tagging with spray paint. When they saw that all we had was Silly String, and that we had no idea who the spray painters were, and hadn’t seen them, they let us go. And that was pretty much the end of my career as a juvenile delinquent.

I was able to all but ignore Halloween from about 1982 until fairly recently. About the only thing I’d do was give out candy (and hey, seventh grade boys—here’s a tip: don’t go out in the same outfit you wore to school, ring doorbells and hold out your bag for candy with a disaffected grunt. Show a little spirit and put some effort into it, or you can just get your candy from someone else’s house; you won’t be getting any of my Snickers Fun Size, you little assholes. If you’re too embarrassed to say it, you’re too old to do it), and possibly attend the occasional adult Halloween party. I’m not a complete toad—I’d dress up. I remember one year I went as a teenager, which necessitated me buying the first copy of Seventeen magazine I’d had since I was seventeen. You know, to see what the kids were wearing.

But then I started having my own kids, and of course they wanted in on this free candy thing, so I was forced to participate again. This time I went to the other extreme, and started making all their costumes from scratch.

Let me tell you about that. Making a costume from scratch sounds awesome and supportive and dedicated. In reality it is stupid and expensive and stressful. One year I made my four kids’ costumes and ended up spending over SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS on the fabric, patterns, notions, what have you. Six hundred bucks! And I was making shit like Pokemon. I had two kids who wanted to be Pokemon that year, but of course they didn’t want to be the one they actually sell the pattern for (his name is Pikachu, if you care, or if you have an eight year old boy and it therefore means something to you). They wanted to be these other bizarre ones that look like lizards and shit, and for which of course you can’t just go out and buy a pattern. So not only did I have to make them, I had to make them up. Three years in a row I spent the weekend before Halloween in tears, swearing to God we weren’t going to do this again next year (so I was a little slow in actually doing it).

So this year we did buy costumes. Now I see part of the benefit of not buying them costumes. When I’m making them, they can’t possibly wear them until they’re done (which was usually October 30^th at 10:30 p.m.). This year they’ve had them for two weeks, and already they’ve wanted to wear them to about six different places. Mean, mean Mommy refuses to allow this. Know why? I’ll tell you—it’s because if I let them wear them to the zoo, the park, the grocery store, and every other place they wanted to wear them for the 30 days prior to Halloween, at 3 p.m. on October 31^st, they would announce that they were bored with whatever costume they’d been wearing for the last month, and that they wanted to be, “something else.” This would cause me to lose my grip on what’s left of my precious, fragile sanity.

So clearly this is a no win situation. I either stress myself out emotionally and financially, or I spend a month being stressed out because I have to keep refusing to allow them to go to every event dressed as a wizard or Dead Man Rocking (a sort of zombie rock star—don’t ask) because they’d get bored and/or ruin the costume and then have nothing to wear on Halloween proper. About the only thing I can do at this point is just wait until they claim to be too old for such foolishness. Which should take about six more years.

I know when my kids are grown up, there are things I will miss—I already miss that my daughter no longer refers biscuits as “bistiks,” and that one of my twins no longer has that adorable baby lisp that caused him to say things like “fwosting” instead of “frosting.” But I refuse to miss the mayhem around Halloween. I’ve been over it for about thirty six years now.