I'll Never Be Anybody's Hero Now

Well...another Halloween come and gone and all we have to show for it are 2 pillowcases with about 20 pounds of candy in each. Now, whenever my kids tell me they are hungry I say, "Why don't you have a piece of Halloween candy?" no matter what time it is. Pretty soon there won't be anything left but Dots (who really buys those to hand out? They taste like crap) and those bags of Kiwanis peanuts that someone in our neighborhood always hands out.

This year my kids decided they wanted to dress up like Superheros. Bronte found a Spiderman costume at Costco in August and so Brenna decided she would be Superman and her friend J would be Batman and her friend G would be Robin (who is technically just a side-kick, not a real Superhero, but I wasn't going to point it out to her. Well, I might have, but only on Halloween when she was actually wearing the costume so she could walk around in SHAME all night. Just kidding. Really.) and Bronte's friend L was going to be Supergirl. Then they were all going to go trick-or-treating together. So far, so good, right? WRONG! By the time I actually got around to taking Brenna and her friend G shopping for their costumes (J and her mom had already gotten the Batman costume. J's mom is really efficient which just makes me mad because I look so lame in comparison. She's skinny too. Bitch.) there weren't any stupid Superhero costumes left. We went to a whole bunch of stores too, not just the Target around the corner. So, I bought them the next best thing to a Superhero costume....I bought them Ghostbuster costumes. I thought it was such a great idea, I bought Ghostbuster costumes for Tony and me too. (After all, there were 4 Ghostbusters) Brenna's friend, J, decided that she didn't want to be a Superhero anymore, so her mom made her a costume to go with ours. J was the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Yes, her mother MADE IT. See why I have a hard time liking her? Who has the time or the energy to MAKE costumes? When I was a kid, I was the same thing for Halloween every year; a princess. I wore a tiara, a long sparkly dress and makeup. Perfect! Then, when I was in 4th grade I discovered Elton John...so I dressed up like Elton John every year after that. I wore a tiara, a long sparkly dress and make-up! Perfect! I figured, "Why be a stupid princess when I can be a Queen?"
Okay, back to this Halloween...so, the kids went to school and Tony and I prepared ourselves for the day. Tony set up the fog machine, put the flying red-eyed bat on the basketball hoop, made sure the scary scarecrow was firmly attached to the tree with the giant spiderweb, prepared the sound-activated "rat in a trap" to go off every time a kid approached the door...and I went to the gym. Hey, a Ghostbuster needs to be buff. When I got back and showered, we put on our Ghostbuster costumes and went to Bronte's school to help with the party. Out of Bronte's entire first grade class, she was the only one who knew who we were supposed to be, because we, of course, allow our 6 year old to watch movies with scary ghosts and sexual undertones. WHATEVER! I helped the kids make homemade slime out of water, Borax and glue. (The teacher split the kids into groups of 4 and they went to different stations around the room. Slime was mine.) I told them all that they weren't to eat it or let their pets or siblings eat it either. Some kid asked me, "Can I let my brother lick it?" at which point I wondered why I thought it was a good idea to have first graders make slime. Of course they want to eat it! Especially after I told them not to. Tony was at the second most popular station (with mine being the first); the donut on a string station. At this station, there were chocolate cake donuts tied to a dowel rod on a long string. The kids had to put their hands behind their backs and kneel (prison-style) two at a time and try to eat the donut faster than the other kid. Tony told me afterward that there was one girl that had the longest tongue he'd ever seen. She literally stuck her tongue out, wrapped it around the donut and stuck it in her mouth. She's going to be very popular in high school.

After school we went back to the house and got ready for the real fun. My mom and dad came over to hand out candy so we could go trick-or-treating with the kids but not be the lame-o's of the neighborhood who isn't home on Halloween. You see, I don't care if my PARENTS are the lame-o's of their neighborhood, I only care about my own reputation. Brenna was ready to go in her Ghostbuster costume and her friend J was getting her Stay Puft costume on with the help of her mother. We were waiting for my dear friend to show up with her kids G and L who were going be the fourth Ghostbuster and Supergirl, respectively. Finally, once we had taken copious photos on the front lawn, we were all ready to go. Supergirl, Spiderman, the four Ghostbusters (because, of course Tony and I stayed in our costumes) and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man set off. My dear friend (the mother of G and L), I assumed, was going to come with us because I figured she'd want to see people's reactions to her kids in costume. However, she turned around and got in her car. I looked at her daughter, G, and said, "Where's your mom going?" and she said, "I don't know. She's probably going to follow us in the car, " and then she rolled her eyes. (She's 12, just like my sassy daughter. Her eyeballs are going to stick in permanent eye-roll mode just like Brenna's.) Well, sure enough, my pal was in her black BMW sports-utility vehicle inching along the curb right behind us.
From the sidewalk, I turned to her to ask her what the hell she was doing in the car when....suddenly...I heard something. Oh yes...my genius friend was BLASTING the Ghostbusters theme song from her Beemer. I almost wet my pants laughing. She yelled out (over the strains of "Who ya gonna call? GHOSTBUSTERS!") to me, "Are you surprised? I went on-line and bought it and I have it on this disc over and over!" I was laughing my ass off. I tried to tell her how awesome it was, but she kept yelling "WHAT?" because she had the volume up all the way and she couldn't hear me. So, I decided to show my appreciation through dance. I did The Lawnmower, The Funky Chicken and various versions of The Robot. She was laughing so hard she almost ran into a parked car. My neighbors probably all thought I was drunk. Tony and I danced (seriously...danced) all over the neighborhood to the Ghostbusters song for upwards of 2 hours. My friend inched along behind us, blasting the song and smoking cigarettes in her black BMW the entire time. Honestly, she is the best! Who else would have thought to do that? (I don't know why I was so surprised though. I mean, this is the same girl who, 13 years ago, gave me "the best water ever". Let me explain...we were both working as make-up artists for Lancome and we won some stupid contest and we got to go see "Miss Saigon" in Chicago. The downside of this, for both of us, was that we were going to have to go with the other stupid girls who won. Well, my friend decided to drive and I, of course, had to sit in the front seat. As we were speeding down the tollway into the city, she was drinking from a huge sippy cup thing. At one point she turned to me and said, "Here, have a drink." I said, "What is it?" She replied, "Water," and I said, "No thanks, I'm not thirsty." She said, "Have some!" and I said, "I'm not THIRSTY." She shoved it in my hands and said, "It's really good water." To appease her, I took a huge gulp. Big mistake. The cup was full of champagne.) I have never had more fun trick-or-treating in my life. I don't think my kids have either. At one point, Brenna got all of us Ghostbusters to do a fabulous line dance where we pretended to shoot her friend the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. It was great. I think my friend was mostly deaf for at least 2 hours afterwards judging from the way she yelled her entire conversation at the dinner table.
Next year, when we go trick-or-treating, we are definitely going to need a soundtrack again. It made it WAY more fun. Maybe we should go as John Travolta circa Saturday Night Fever and she could follow us blaring "Stayin' Alive". What do you think??