Monday, October 13, 2008

Halloween's Past

They were talking about haunted houses on the radio this morning, which prompted me to ask Josh about his recent trip with his friends. I laughed as he described how much fun they had. Apparently Bre was a good sport and fun to scare so the actors were calling to the rooms ahead saying "get the girl in the back." Josh said that at one point he was standing still like a pillar and Bre kept running around, hiding behind him and the actors would follow her from room to room. He said sometimes he'd warn her, but other times he just watched as they sneaked up beside her and walked along with her.

I love haunted houses. Mom wouldn't let us trick or treat when we were kids. She heard the stories of razor blades in apples and tampered candy and said it was too dangerous. Then Mike was diagnosed with diabetes so he couldn't have candy anyway. Our Halloween's were spent at carnivals and haunted houses. I was absolutely thrilled when I was a teenager and a church youth group asked me to work at their haunted house. Our room was a surgical room with a "mad" doctor performing a gruesome surgery and we had a few other people in the room, like a crazy person in a straight jacket. Guess who played crazy real well? I had a blast. I asked people to play patty cake with me and danced around the room. My big claim to fame is that the local news channel came through and filmed our room and my antics and I ended up being on t.v. I also got to play Princess Leia chained to Jaba the Hut and a grim reaper.

I guess all that exposure kind of turned me into a warped mom because when it came time to take Joshua to his first haunted house we went straight to the big, professional, scary ones. We never took him to the ones at the little carnivals where you stick your hands through holes and feel strange things like spaghettti and pretend it's intestines. Of course our daredevil child was definately up for the task. He couldn't wait. We walked through and we laughed and screamed and Josh took it all in.... and then we got to the room with the chainsaws. They chased Josh around the room until he backed into a corner, scooched down the wall, at down and laughed and screamed. Rick and I just stood there and laughed.

As we were talking about it this morning I suddenly thought it was pretty odd that we just let them torture our kid and once again I told Josh "I'm sorry, we probably warped you didn't we." He laughed and said "yes, definately."

Once again I'm left to wonder if it's his nature or if the child truly did just have to learn to survive his crazy parents. I wonder if I'll be allowed to babysit when grandchildren come along?

No comments: