Ideal Christmas Reading . . . If Your Ideal Christmas Involves A Global War Against Zombies . . . But Doesn’t Everyone’s?

I’m reading World War Z which is very scary. But not in the stereotypical “zombies are gonna get me” way. It’s more in the “world is falling apart around you and your normal everyday life is ending and you know you can’t protect your wife and kids and your government can’t help you and you may get left behind as a big-ass meteor is heading towards Earth and you can’t do a fricken thing about it hopeless kind of way.”

That kind of scary. But it’s good.

Friends

Halloween was fun last night with my youngest getting plenty of candy and exercise walking around the neighborhood.  I also had an old high school/college friend, Eddie, drop by and we shared a beer while talking old times and giving out candy to kids. (That’s Eddie pictured above some 30 or so years ago.)

There was some controversy as my son and the daughter of another friend were “left out” of a group hayride around the neighborhood organized and run by two neighbors/friends of ours.   There’s been some strain in our friendship over the past few months and we have no idea why.  Most of the time you don’t see it although there always seems to be an undercurrent of tension.

Now we’re smart enough to know that this feeling could just be on our part - our imaginations so to speak - but then occasionly it will surface like this, and it is incredibly frustrating because we just cannot figure out what brings it on or why. 

Did we do something wrong?  We don’t think so, but we’re human so anything is possible, but we have thunk and thunk and cannot come up with any one thing that would have damaged our friendship.  Maybe it was a bunch of little things, but again, aside from not waving quickly enough when we see them (that is a big deal in the South) we can’t think of anything.  And that’s just us trying to figure out our part in all this - why the other child wasn’t invited is even more curiouser since she is a girl and both of those neighbors/friends have girls who are friends with her on a pretty-much daily basis.

There’s so much more to this little story that I can’t include here, however.  Tons of little details and side-stories that might make it easier for you to see why it is happening.  Maybe we are too close to the situation, so close we can’t see the trees for the forest.  And maybe you might see what we are missing from afar.

But I can’t tell all that, mostly from a brevity standpoint, but also because it would just be my side of the story and not fair to the others involved.  They are good people, you see, which is why we became friends in the first place.  So I’m not here to talk them down. I just wish I could understand how and why it all changed. So maybe I could change it back.

And be friends with them as long as I have been friends with Eddie.

Candy Psychology

What does your Halloween candy of choice you?  My favs are listed below.

Almond Joy: These folks are happy-go-lucky.
Introduced in 1946 by the Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Co. in New Haven, Conn. It’s a companion to the Mounds bar, which arrived in 1920. *The snack size (17 grams) has 80 calories.

Butterfinger: Evasive, slippery, not necessarily to be trusted. Invented in 1923 by the Curtiss Candy Co. of Chicago. The crunchy bar wrapped in chocolate is now made by Nestle.
*The Fun Size (18.5 grams) has 85 calories.

Snickers:Just going with the crowd, the safe candy choice, guaranteed to please the masses. Not ambitious, but dependable. Created in 1930 by Mars, Snickers bars sold for a nickel. The Fun Size was introduced in 1968. *The Fun Size (17 grams) has 80 calories.

Twizzlers: Sickos. Truly demented. Plastic people living plastic lives. The Twizzlers brand was introduced in 1929. The red licorice strips are manufactured by Y&S Candies, a company established in 1845 that is now a Hershey subsidiary. *The snack size (14 grams) has 37 calories.

So I am the happy-go-lucky, dependable, yet evasive and slippery, twisted, demented type.

Can’t say I would argue with that.

Hat-tip to Stop and Wander.

Great Pumpkin Time

Halloween is simply my favorite holiday of all time.  Even Christmas, with birth of our Savior and the Ho Ho Ho of Santa, comes in a distant second. 

I think it’s because of the weather mostly.  I love fall.  Some people think it’s the season of death.  They see the brown leaves falling and days shortening and it reminds them of life ending. 

Not me.  To me, fall is a cool season of renewal where cold rains and sharp winds wash and blow away the heat and dust and grime of summer.

Refreshing.

Fall is football games and hot Dr Pepper with lemon (trust me, it’s good), chilly nights wrapped in warm sweatpants, flannel shirts and homemade comforters, and the smell of chili cooking in a big crockpot and jalapeno cornbread in the oven.

It’s early mornings getting the kids off to school while it’s still dark and driving home from work with the headlights on at 6 pm.

It’s putting-out Halloween decorations that mix and match with Thanksgiving decorations so that you only have to take in a few things instead of having to put out a whole new set.

It’s having the pool closed and starting my annual battle with the leaves armed only with my leaf blower and a beer.

It’s not having to mow with my lousy John Deere mower or whack weeds with my old and ornery Weed Eater.

It’s sitting in my office with wearing my jacket because they only turn the heat on one half of the day on my side of the building.

It’s our neighbor’s annual Halloween party, which at times has been quite raucous, but this year was more subdued (maybe we are all just showing our age).

It’s knowing that soon Thanksgiving will be here with all the great food and loving family and long naps.

It’s knowing that the holiday movie season is going to start with lots of comedies and family movies.

It’s the season of my youngest son’s birthday.

It’s the anticipation of blogging about how the anti-Christian left is going to slam Christmas. (I do so love blasting them over that.)

And this year it’s the release of not one, but two new computer games that I simply cannot wait to play. One comes out today as a matter of fact and I will probably be playing it late into the night.

After trick-or-treating, of course.

So today is filled with anticipation. Kids dressing in costumes walking around the neighborhood grabbing handfuls of candy from bowls offered by good neighbors.

I did that every year when I was a kid and about the only difference I see now is that more parents go with the kids now.  In my day, parents stayed at home while we roamed wildly playing the parts of our costumes - cowboys, devils, princesses, ghosts - not worrying about how we acted or who saw us.  Not that we did anything wrong really.  What’s an egg or two on a window or some bottle-rockets fired at Old Man Moses’ house (his real name, by the way, God bless him)?

Come on, we were kids.  It was the 1960s.  It was, looking back on it, so innocent and hopeful, even with the sound of Walter Cronkite and the Vietnam war in the background every evening during dinner.

Kids that age, the age of trick-or-treating, don’t care about that stuff.  They only want that magical feeling of make-believe and mystery and the permission to revel in it for that one special night.  It’s that way now and it was that way back then.

We’ve tried to give that to our kids.  And I think they have tasted a bit of it, but not the whole thing.  A couple of hours farming candy with your parents just isn’t the same thing as camping-out in a small country cemetery hoping you can catch a glimpse of a real ghost while at the same time scared to death one might actually appear.  (That is so fun, you just have to try it once.)

Yes, we’ve tried to give that to them.  As have some of our neighbors.  Because they need that in their lives.  The make-believe.  Those Great Pumpkin moments (which we still watch). The freedom to explore and grow and renew themselves.

Just like fall renews the world.

Happy Halloween!!