Feeling witchy

My children bought their Halloween costumes today. No, I haven’t lost my calendar. I realize Halloween is over a month away. My son has a Boy Scout Spook-a-Ree campout that he has been looking forward to for an entire year, so we have to plan ahead. Funny, Girl Scouts are forbidden to tell ghost stories, but the Boy Scouts do a haunted trail, complete with chainsaws and crazy dentists.

Regardless, we would be planning anyway. Halloween is a big deal at our house. I love it. (And no, I don’t worship the devil, so please quit leaving pamphlets on my door). I love seeing the kids dressed up (okay, sometimes I do, too) and running around being totally carefree. It’s great to watch kids just being kids. And the candy is not bad, either.

We started our Halloween decorating tradition at my house a few years ago with a lone wolf man, which consists of a mask and a jumpsuit hung on pvc pipe. That has grown to a full tunnel of doom leading down our walk to our front steps. My children have more fun watching frightened kids enter, in hopes of finding candy at the end of the dark, ghoul-filled tunnel, than trick-or-treating themselves.

We have to be careful of the wolf man; however, he is a bit of a peeping Tom. Somehow he ended up in front of my neighbor’s basement door, little knowing she goes walking at 4 a.m. every morning. It’s a wonder she didn’t have a heart attack or shoot the poor guy one. Either way, he ended up in front of my glass door, much to my horror, as I went out to get the morning paper. From then on, each Halloween, the neighbors and I sleep with one eye open, never knowing where the wolf man will turn up next.

Thanks to after-Halloween sales, our haunted house grows each year, much to the delight of the neighborhood children and the chagrin of my more prudent neighbors. That’s okay; sometimes it's fun to be called a witch.