Atomictumor

I’m turning into my mother.

Well, without the boobies, I guess (and there go the internet filters).

No, I hate prefabricated holidays.  Halloween, to me as a youngster, was a great time to go out and cause mischief.  And the mischief we did cause.

Lemme tell you a story.

Halloween, 1992-3ish:

Me and me mates were out at their house in East Brainard, and bored, on halloween, so we got the idea that we were going to go try and get some candy by singing christmas carols (yeah, I know, edgy).  We were all punk rockers, with the hair, and the safety pins, and torn T shirts with slogans like “Be Warned: The Nature of Your Oppression is the Aesthetic of Our Anger!” (which I still don’t really understand, but it looked cool) all over them, so we really didn’t NEED to wear a halloween costume.  We were ready to roll.

And roll we did, son.  We headed right over to the apartments, and sung bad christmas carols, and some people were amused.  Some people weren’t.  Kids were scared.

Well, we got sick of that REALLY quick.  Isn’t it funny how an idea that seems really great sitting around with your friends turns really sour once implemented?  So, we turned to that old standby when we’re bored, petty vandalism.

I mean, really petty.  See, there was this one guy in the neighborhood who was one of those lawn nazis.  He yelled at the little kids if they edged his yard to avoid walking around the block to get home.  He watched like a hawk the hired foreigners who did the lawn, while standing on the back porch.  He was an ass.

Let me stop here, and tell you about the car we used.  My friend (who I won’t name, just in case he’s trying to recover from knowing me in the past) had a POS Tercel, but the car tended to accumulate the oddest things.  Once, we got pulled over for erratic driving in Downtown Chattanooga, the officer walked up to the car, and this is what he saw scattered about the floorboards:

1 large bag confectioners sugar in ziploc bag
2 baseball bats, aluminum
1 mini chainsaw
1 air pistol
3 high power mortar style fireworks
1 pair nunchaku
1 knife, butterfly style
5 plastic dart guns
1 lifesized plastic baby Jesus doll (it was hard to find)
1 roll garden bags, black
1 short handled shovel
3 cans of mace
assorted wrappers, drink containers, empty cigarette boxes.
So he shines his flashlight around the debris, in the faces of the 4 hoodlums in the car, back around the debris, and waves us along.  Didn’t even get a ticket.
Good think he didn’t look in the trunk…

So anyway, the Tercel was home of all sorts of stuff, and on this particular day, for what reason I’ll never know, it had 4 of those large garbage bags full of leaves.

Now, the lawn nazi’s house was next to a parking lot which was attached to a Subway.  I didn’t care a lot of Subway then, but beggars won’t be choosers, so we stopped by there to get some dinner.

The guy behind the counter was a jerk.  I don’t remember what the circumstances were, but I concluded that the problem could be solved with explosives.  So, we left Subway, walked out to the car, and I grabbed a handful of M-80s that the car provided me with.

We had a precision plan.  I was going to light the M-80s on the back door of Subway (it sounded like a good idea at the time), while Jon, the car’s owners little brother, was going to drop the leaves in the yard of the Nazi.  Yes, this will show the world.

This is one of those moments that stretch 5 or 6 seconds into 10 minutes or so…

The plan went wrong.  I lit the fuses too late, he tossed the leaves too early, the fuse was too short, and BANG went the M-80s.

Walking back to the car, there was another BANG, which was the owner of the jewelry store kicking the door open with the biggest shotgun I’ve ever seen pointing in my direction.  Somehow, in my hindsight, I’m able to see both the shop owner, and the faces of my colleagues in the car, and their mouths look as round and big as the hole at the end of that freaking shotgun.

I leap into the car as it peeled out of the parking lot (and out of shotgun range).  I don’t think the shopkeeper ever got off a shot, and I doubt that he would, but it still made for an interesting halloween.

Now, I’ve gone completely backwards and forgotten what the hell any of this has to do with my mother.  I don’t think she ever got a shotgun pulled on her.

Furthermore, I don’t think she’s heard that story…