Last night they aired “The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” to my great delight. I hadn’t seen “The Great Pumpkin..” in a few years and while watching it I realized that the same thought occurred to me now, that did when I was a kid but of course more from the perspective of a parent… Where the heck were Lucy and Linus’ parents? I mean seriously. Lucy wakes up at four am and realizes her crazy little brother is still out in the pumpkin patch freezing so SHE goes and gets him and tucks him into bed. Nobody called cartoon child welfare services?
Hallowe’en was always my favourite ‘holiday’, and still is even though the way we celebrate it has diminished some over the years. I mean the kids don’t trick or treat anymore, we don’t go to Hallwe’en house parties these days, private fireworks are banned in our city now and we don’t have a house to decorate and entertain any of the small goblins that may visit.
The last few years Hallowe’en tradition has shrunk to going to get Tim Horton’s coffee and hot chocolate (depending who you are) which used to be the staple of those of us walking around outside while the Trick or Treater was doing their thing.
Summers here can last well into October some years and then the hammer falls. It goes from hot to mild to COLD almost in the blink of an eye when that happens. Some years walking around outside Hallowe’en night meant freezing your butt off, some years it was just, well, crisp. Those years were my favourites because I do love fall and the crunching of leaves under your feet while you walk, I’m not so big on slipping on frozen or wet leaves, but that’s just me.
When the kids were small I had so much fun dressing them up. Chris allowed me a bit more freedom on the creative side.
Despite my hate for clowns, Chris wanted to be one… so I made him a clown. Hard to be scared of a face that cute though anyway.
The genius that I was, I used that spray on hair colour from a can to darken his then blonde hair, THEN I put in my Dad’s hair cream. Not so smart because the grease in that stuff picked up the colour on his hair and spread it EVERYWHERE. The collar of his costume, his car seat, his coat. Oy!
When he went to school wearing this costume his teacher was horrified. That made me so proud 
gotta love it when you freak out a teacher.
The first year Sean was interested in dressing up (he was a year and a half old), damn he was a cute little bee. I dressed him as a bee twice. Chris wanted to be a Ninja that year so no makeup was required (sigh)
Sean, once he got older demanded to wear masks and wouldn’t hear of me putting any kind of makeup on his face, at least after I tried to make him ‘cute’ and he wanted to be scary. At each house we went to when everyone said “Oh what a cute pumpkin you are!” He would answer back.. “I’m not a cute pumpkin, I’m a KILLER PUMPKIN!!!!” The folks at the door would look at me and clear their throats and I would just smile sheepishly. Yeah, that’s my boy.
Posted by americanuck
