The Bluffton Sun - Published on 10/16/2024
Ah, yes. Halloween. The sugar-infused time of year where millions of children assume alter egos and invade neighborhoods to collect their annual chocolate tithe.
Here is my Instagram vision board of this holiday:
My teenage daughters and I carve pumpkins - laughing as we create beautiful family memories. We seamlessly move through the myriad of holiday events together, enjoying homemade confections while dressing for the grand finale: Trick or Treating. The girls, resplendent in their innocent costumes, enthrall legions of littles while donating their time to the local Trunk-or-Treat. A wonderful time was had by all. (Flicks away a small tear)
And....then there's my reality:
My husband goes out of town all week on a business trip, leaving the pumpkin carving to Tracy Krueger and the Kardashians. We begin lobotomies on the unsuspecting gourds. That lasts about 3.2 happy seconds until one daughter shrieks “Ohio skibbidi rizz!”and bounds upstairs to hide in her room to discuss whatever teenage catastrophe was happening in SnapChat. Fifty-seven seconds later the other daughter answers her phone and mouths “Can’t hear you, Mom. FaceTiming.” and follows her sister’s lead upstairs.
For what feels like eleventy-million hours, a dozen close calls with the knife, and one argument about why I am not going to DoorDash Starbucks, I finally finish what we all started as time together because my daughter is going to college soon and we have to make memories! My pumpkin is without a face or a brain - an homage to how I feel these days. Up next: costumes - which is its own secret level of Dante’s Inferno. The Elder Kardashian needs several costume changes because God forbid we be seen in the same outfit at multiple events. ”You cannot be serious, Mom.”
And my youngest Kardashian wants the tiniest of costumes that leave little to the imagination because Halloween has become I Wanna Be a Ho-loween.
Um, you’re trick-or-treating around a gated community, not going to some fraternity party. It's okay to be a sexy librarian/nurse/taxidermist WHEN YOU’RE IN COLLEGE. It is not, however, ok to dress like Stripperella for the pet costume parade through Hampton Lake. I reject their choices ranging from slutty vampires, to Skankensteins, to ho-beaux (aka princesses). Desperate and running out of time, I offer to order their costumes for them on Amazon. Two Nuns in Adult size Small. And, no, not slutty nuns with bad habits. Just regular, old, lovely, pure nuns. To sweeten the deal, I’ll even include your Harley-riding-hole-digging Father to walk a few steps behind - just in case Little Red Riding Ho is out with Ho White recruiting for Cheetah’s.
Long gone are the days of the plastic superhero costume that you put on over your clothes. You know the ones - they came in a box with a stiff mask that threatened to slice your face into shards. You had to use sonar to figure out where you were going because the eye holes were never where anyone’s actual retinas are located. And the flimsy rubber band that held up your entire identity - the mask - snapped off around house number three. Bonus points if you grew up in New England and Halloween was always cold, so you had to wear your winter jacket over your costume.
"Aren't you a nice...um...thing with red pants..."
“I’m Wonder Woman. Thank you for the crumpled paper bag with candy corn and some pennies.”
Next up - trying to convince two sisters to roast pumpkin seeds instead of each other on social media.