Mamacita says:  It’s Hallowe’en!  I’m diabetic so I can’t safely eat any kind of candy but I’m a sucker – not for suckers, unless I’m in the French Lick office with Carol and we’re seeing how many licks it takes to completely expose the chocolatey center of a Tootsie Roll Pop – but for Snickers and Mounds and Almond Joys and Three Musketeers.  This is why I buy other kinds of candy for the Trick-Or-Treating children who come to the door.  I don’t give out health food or carrot sticks or raisins because I am not an evil child-hating sadist, but I don’t give out candy I personally like.  It’s strictly a health thing.  Strictly.  Oh, hush.

There are a lot of great Hallowe’en movies out there, too.  The Nightmare Before Christmas is one of my favorites.

 

Oh, and THIS IS HALLOWE’EN!

 

In case you are wondering, the word “Hallowe’en” is SUPPOSED to have an apostrophe in it. It’s an old spelling, but I like it so I use it. I think you should, too. It would help us all remember what the word actually means.

Fie on you know-nothings who assume Hallowe’en is a satanic holiday.  Please do some research on your own before you succumb to someone else’s unresearched beliefs.  Pffff.

I learned about this from the literature book my mother used when she was in the third grade. I loved that book as a child, and I still do. Wonder of wonders – and oh MY, how veddy, veddy politically incorrect – that book contained actual, honest-to-pete LITERATURE! Yes, actual literature, not those stupid, insipid, limited-vocabulary travesties some teachers call “literature;” heck, I wouldn’t even call that stuff “stories.” It’s most certainly not literature.

But that third grade book had excerpts from Peter Pan, and Les Miserables, and Little House in the Big Woods, all unabridged.. That little schoolbook is why I ran to the library to get and read those novels when I was in lower elementary school.

Back then, schoolbooks were purchased, not rented, and Mom loved that book so much, she kept it, and re-read it many times. Once I learned to read, so did I.

I don’t think I ever had a Language Arts book I liked well enough to want to keep, even if it had been permitted. Watered-down abridgements are the devil, and I mean that in a truly satanic way. And you really don’t want to get me started on “limited vocabulary” selections. Kids learn new words by exposure to new words. No exposure = no new words added to one’s vocabulary.

No wonder so many of our kids today aren’t interested in reading for pleasure. Our schools don’t give them anything worth reading. Some of them graduate – or don’t – without ever having been exposed to a single interesting, challenging thing worth reading.

And this from someone who actually liked Silas Marner.

We seldom carve turnips these days, but pumpkins are versatile and fun, aren’t they.  Don’t forget to toast the seeds.  Oh, and are you still carving pumpkin faces the usual way?  Amateurs.. .

Watch Steve Spangler carve a jack-o-lantern.  (Another word with an interesting etymology. . . .)

Steve Spangler knows how to knock your socks off, if you’re wearing socks.  If you’re not, his stuff will curl your toes. If you have no toes, well, I cried because I had no shoes.

If you go thou and do likewise, don’t forget your goggles.

I hope to see you and your kids Halloween night.  My house is the one that’s wailing.  If strobes give you seizures, you might want to skip my house and go on to the plain quiet house next door.  However, they’re giving out Smarties and I’ve got the good stuff and vampire teeth.  Your call.

Also:  the young hot Tim Curry as Dr. Frank N. Furter.  Be still my heart.