10.25.2004
smashing pumpkins
They smashed our pumpkins already. Halloween's a week out and they smashed 'em to bits. They weren't even enterprising enough to carry them somewhere extravagant: the street, the sidewalk, the middle of the parking lot. They took the easy way out, smashed them right there on our walk way. The guts of the poor things spilled over into our neighbor's yard. I hope they didn't suffer much.
This is the problem, as I see it, with American Youth (letters left capitulated for later refurbishment.) Not only were they too weak to carry the things anywhere for the assault; they were too eager to get at them. A week before halloween isn't even halloweenween, or halloweenweenween. Whatever mad rulebook they're using couldn't possibly have told them this was okay. There's no way any instructor of mischief actually meant for them to attempt this trick a whole week prior to the target date.
Was it a misfire? Did someone bungle something? Perhaps these were wee children. Maybe the little kid with the silver scooter (one of those now-ubiquitous contraptions that couldn't possibly be useful as a transportation device, the little kid who likes to zoom right out into the street on that thing, not bothering to check for approaching cars but always eager, should he be confronted with one squealing to a hault in front of him once he's already out there, to drop the thing right there and let himself hurl like a rag doll across the opposite sidewalk and into the grass, from where he then scurries away, waiting for the driver to move the thing himself so he can continue on his way,) was the mastermind here.
"Pumpkins!" he must've shouted to the little five year old girl who's always checking the mail. She must've laughed at him.
"Let's go get 'em!" he must've continued. With that, he probably headed for our stoop, leaving his scooter resting against my car, forgotten for the time being. The sweet little girl would've had no choice but to go with him. Even at this young age she's unable to resist the temptations of the brash, commanding he-man with the skinned knees and the always-missing-shirt.
Being the hero he, of course, picked up the bigger one. It was heavy. He would've carried it with both hands, swinging it like a pendulum between his knees, scuffling his feet as he worked his way carefully toward his scooter. This kid's maybe not so bright when it comes to avoiding traffic, but he's got an eye for chaos. He would've at least worked out a rudimentary plan, something along the lines of setting them on the scooter and pushing them out in front of something shiny and moving.
The little girl wanted nothing more than to prove to him that she could play with the big boys. Her head was full of happy pictures of big-scary pumpkin and cute, little pumpkin snuggling together somewhere secret. She was proud of herself when she lifted it, and she almost didn't notice the bulbous orange spider, bigger than her head, still hanging from the front of our house.
She must've eeked, and the weather was dismal and wet and the pumpkin was so slick, and besides she'd already forgotten all about the pumpkin by the time it tumbled from her hands right back down onto the stoop, splattering down into the bushes.
And that's when he-man freaked out. "Auuuahhh!!" he must've yelled, as I've heard him yell countless times before when he was falling from a tree or a fence or running headlong into a parked truck. What he was implying was in this case, "Quiet! They'll hear you!"
The girl wasn't listening anyway. She was falling over backward, splattered pumpkin all over her pants, still trying to keep an eye on that hideous orange caricature of a spider while backpeddling away. It hadn't worked and she'd stumbled.
He-man couldn't hold the heavy one any longer. It made what would've been a satisfying squunch when it hit our walkway. It would've been satisfying, that is, if he'd heard it, but he was still saying, "aaaauuughahaaaa!" and running away down the sidewalk. By now the little girl was crying, her eyes bigger than the pumpkin she'd destroyed, crawling backwards through the neighbor's wet grass. At last she would be unable to see it anymore, and she'd have gotten up to run as hard as she could, heading for a back yard somewhere, or maybe even for her mommy, or whatever female semi-adult person it is that's usually "watching" her.
And this is when the juvenile-delinquent-waiting-to-happen would've remembered the scooter. "Aauuuauaghggh!!!" he would've shouted as he let his momentum carry him in a wide, loping circle through the street and back toward my car and his resting scooter.
But he was at least nimble this time: he didn't leave a scratch that I could see.
(Warning: Creepy Spider images linked below.)
The spider was still on the front of the house today when I got home. She had moved a little, and the lustre had gone from her, but she was unmistakable. The top of her bulb was dark brown, nearly black. (The "top" is always on the bottom: she hangs there, upside down, no matter where she's situated herself.) All of her energy had been spent scaring the child into dropping the pumpkin which she had taken as her adoptive mother. The she saw what she had done; both of her parents had been destroyed in part due to her own actions. She attempted to get through the blower vent on the front of our house, but could not make it. And so, as far as I know, she hangs there still.
But did she leave an egg sac somewhere nearby? One can only hope.
(None of those images were taken today, after her changing color. All of these are from before. I couldn't bring myself to pay enough attention to her to take pictures again today. I am weak.)
