Haunted Houses

Despite Superstorm Sandy’s best efforts last week, we made it through Halloween. We had a slightly higher number of kids this year than last year, but still not that many. We didn’t even finish off two bags of candy, despite more kids. We saw some really cute kids, their little faces happy and smiling as they loaded up their bags with Kit Kats and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. One little girl took a Peanut Butter Cup, looked at it and said “Ooh, what’s in this?” To which her mother replied “Don’t worry. If you don’t like it, Mommy will eat it.” Just a hunch, but from the way she was clutching that piece of candy I don’t think Mommy was going to get it, no matter what.

While watching the news over the weekend to get an update on the storm, I saw an interview with a person that does a haunted house every year for Halloween. Due to the storm they were going to have to cancel it this year. Somehow that story sparked a memory for me. It had nothing to do with Halloween, but it did include a haunted house. Sort of.

I don’t remember what time of year it was, but it was during the school year because everyone but my younger brother and I were at school. We were in the backyard playing before lunch with the sun shining brightly, warm enough that we didn’t need a jacket that day. There was a small hill at the back of my yard that led up to another street and a wooded area. At the top of the hill there was a small building, which I had only seen from down below, and which my older brothers had told me had been a chicken coop but had nothing in it now. They had also told me that the house beyond the old chicken coop was haunted, so I shouldn’t go near it. How they knew this I didn’t know, but at that age I thought they knew everything and I believed everything they said.  

My younger brother and I must have gotten bored playing with our Matchbox cars and Tonka trucks because we decided to go up the hill a bit. The hill was sandy and there were lots of rocks of varying sizes mixed in. We threw rocks down the hill for a while and we pretended they were bombs hitting the ground and blowing our enemies to bits. At some point we went to the top of the hill. We moved toward the chicken coop and I picked up a couple of good size rocks to protect us in case the house really was haunted. The old chicken coop looked abandoned and there were already a couple of windows broken. I remember throwing a rock at one of the windows and it broke with a marvelous tinkling sound, like it was tickling my ears.

We took turns throwing our rocks at the windows, missing some and hitting others, laughing the whole time. We were pretty good shots for two little kids and were having the time of our lives. We had just picked up another round of ammo when a loud voice rang out from the direction of the house, telling us to stop. We both slowly turned toward the voice – if it was a ghost we didn’t want to see him. To our surprise, it was just an older man. To our horror, he was starting to come down the stairs to the yard and toward us.

We turned and started to run for the hill, no words necessary between us, and my heart beating in my throat. I figured he’d stop at the edge of his yard, but when I glanced back I was shocked to see that he was coming after us. We ran down the hill and tore across the back yard toward the door and safety. We ran inside and sat down at the dining room table, ready for lunch. Mom was in the kitchen and turned around when we came flying into the room, probably because the door slammed. Or maybe because we were both out of breath.

I’m sure my Mom was wondering what the heck was going on with the two of us, especially when the older man just walked right into the house. He was not a happy camper and told Mom we had broken some windows. When she asked us if we had, a brilliant explanation came to me and I told her it wasn’t us, it was two kids who looked like us. Needless to say, Mom didn’t believe us. She was pretty angry and I think she even threatened to tie us to a tree so we couldn’t get out of the yard. I should have learned at that point not to believe everything my older brothers told me, but unfortunately, it took me a few more years to learn that lesson. 

So there was no haunted house that day and there was no haunted house this year for some people, nothing to give them their Halloween chills. Maybe next time I’ll talk about politics – now that would be scary.

Childproof No More

This past weekend we had some of my wife’s family over to our house to do a gift swap with our kids since we can’t get together on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. Their kids ranged in age from about 18 months to 12 years old. My daughter, who is in her first year of college, wasn’t home but my 15 year old son was. Because my kids are older we are not used to having small children in our house. Our house is no longer “childproof” so we had to watch the little ones all the time. However, being seasoned veterans of child rearing, we know that is pretty much impossible, so every so often some of us would check on what was going on.

At one point all the adults were sitting in the kitchen, talking and eating, and we weren’t really paying as much attention to the smallest kids as we should have been. My brother-in-law and I went into our family room to find that some of the kids had got into a few of our games that we thought were put away in a safe place. There on the floor were the games Life and Apples to Apples. All the money and little pieces for Life were mixed in with the 500 or so cards from Apples to Apples. They weren’t just in neat little piles, separated by game. No, as only small children can do, they were mixed together all over the place, along with about 50 Matchbox cars. When I say all over the place, I mean all over the place; the cards for Apples to Apples were under the couches and under the coffee table. It took a long time to find all the cards, put them all the same way so they fit into the slots in the game box and put them away. And yet, it only took a few minutes to make the mess! Even with our diligence we later found Scrabble tiles in different places.

The smallest child still wears a diaper and of course at some point it needed to be changed. I find it funny that people will pick up their child and smell their behind, cringe and with watery eyes say, “Oh, that’s a bad one!” Really? The rest of us knew it was a bad one without having to cause brain damage by taking a whiff. So then it was on to the changing. Like I said earlier, we’re not used to having small children in the house, especially my son. He was eating in the room off of the kitchen when the dirty deed was done. In about 2.5 seconds he was out in the kitchen with his shirt up over his nose to block the smell. To say he was having a hard time with the smell would be a huge understatement. There was about a 50/50 chance he was going to lose his lunch. He then went outside to get some fresh air and away from the smell, his face slightly pale.  

I found the whole incident amusing. I remember those days when I was younger and my older brothers or sisters were changing the diapers on my nieces and nephews. I couldn’t get far enough away! In my mind, I thought I’d never be changing a poopy diaper because I was going to let my wife do it. Then I got married and had kids and realized that would never fly. I think that’s about where my son is now. Just the thought of changing a nasty, poopy diaper is enough to make him physically ill. Someday he’ll be changing them like a pro.

I changed my share of diapers and even gagged on a few of them, but for the most part you get used to the odor. But now that it has been so many years of poopy diaper-less living, I have to admit that I wasn’t quite ready for the onslaught to my nose. I wasn’t gagging, but I was happy when my son went outside for a minute and left the door open. It helped clear the air so I could actually enjoy my food again and so we could get back to our normal conversation instead of discussing poopy diapers.

Later, after everyone was gone, I sat down on the couch and just reveled in the quiet in my family room. I have forgotten how loud small children can be when there is a group of them in a house. The silence was almost deafening. I got up to put away the last couple of Matchbox cars left on the floor and discovered a few more Scrabble tiles that had been missed. Some day we’re going to play Scrabble and find that the Q, the X, or the Z is missing when one of us has an incredible word with Triple Word Score potential. Then we will fully realize that, although we are seasoned veterans of child rearing, our house is most definitely not childproof anymore. 

Puddling

My son and I went to our local D’Angelo’s sandwich shop recently, as it is one of his favorite places to eat. Since I drink a lot of water, I had to go to the men’s room, as usual. As I was washing my hands I noticed one of those “Employees MUST wash their hands” signs. Ya think? There’s probably some state law that says that all restaurants have to put one of those signs in the restrooms, but do we really need a law to tell food handling employees to wash their hands after using the bathroom? Shouldn’t everybody be washing their hands before they leave the bathroom? That is something I was taught as a child and have now taught my kids to do.

As a matter of fact, when I was a kid, washing my hands after using the bathroom might turn into an extended play time. I’d bring some of my little army men and my GI Joe action figure (boys didn’t play with dolls even then) into the bathroom with me, fill up the sink with water and make up all kinds of scenarios. Sometimes they were all just having fun, going swimming in some lake. I’d line them up around the sides of the sink and each one would take a turn jumping in. The more daring men would jump off the cup holder or the soap dish, sometimes doing amazing dives with five or six flips before they hit the water. Sometimes the little army men were the bad guys and GI Joe would come and wipe them all out, throwing them into the water with loud screams and splashes. Sometimes GI Joe was the evil giant and all the good little army men would fight him until he plummeted to his death in the cold water below, but not before a few of the good guys met their demise there, too.

I would also take some of my Matchbox or Hot Wheels cars in with me and play with them in the sink. Sometimes one of the drivers would take a turn too fast, skid around the corner and then drop from the cliff into the ocean below, screaming until the car hit the water. Sometimes the sink was just a big car wash and nobody got hurt or died! Of course, those episodes were not as fun or exciting as the others. And of course I had to do the sound effects. The conversations of the participants, the shots being fired, the tires screeching and the men screaming until they hit the water, mostly done out loud but sometimes only in my head. When the water got too dirty or started getting too cold, I’d put all the guys in the sink, open the drain plug and they’d all fight for their lives as all but one or two got sucked to their death in the whirlpool.

Then I’d refill the sink with water and…usually Mom would come to the bathroom door and ask, “Are you puddling?” That’s what she called our playing in the bathroom sink, puddling. She’d let us puddle for a while and have some fun, but not with multiple sinks full of water. You see, we had only one bathroom for all eleven of us, so someone would want to use the bathroom at some point. And if not, Mom wasn’t going to let us waste that much water. She must have noticed me go in there, heard the toilet flush and the water running in the sink and me not coming out. So when I ran the water the second time – which could have been five minutes or fifty minutes, I was totally lost in the moment and really don’t know how long it was – that was enough time and water for her.  

Most likely Mom wasn’t too mad, though. I probably had the cleanest hands, army men, GI Joe and toy cars in the neighborhood. Something a Mom could be proud of. Unfortunately, we, as a family, almost certainly had the highest water bill in the neighborhood. I guess you take the good with the bad. These days I don’t have any little green army men and my GI Joe action figure is long gone, but every so often while I’m washing my hands I’ll let the soap or the toothpaste take a dive into the lake below. And they’ll be screaming all the way down until they hit the water with a final splash!