Go Ask Dad: Cruising the neighborhood for scary Halloween decorations
Of course, everything is mere prelude to the Great Candy Day on October 31. But my family has a ritual in the weeks leading up to Halloween. While I load the dishwasher after supper, my wife runs the kids through the bath and into their jammies. There’s usually a Halloween cookie or two for them to grab as they scamper out the door in bare feet. Once buckled into the minivan, the sight-seeing begins.
Not all Halloween decorations are the same. While I hang a couple of ghosts from the porch, certain neighbors transform their front lawns into fake graveyards complete with smoke machines and zombies coming out of the grass. The more elaborate light displays are timed to music like “Ghostbusters” and ACDC’s “Highway to Hell” playing on select FM radio channels.
For my kids, however, nothing is more impressive than the inflatables. These blow-up figures can be two stories tall. They light up and even move. The huge, red-eyed spider snaps its jaws!
I actually prefer the inflatables that my 10-year-old dismisses as “lame” like the Minions, or Snoopy and the Peanuts gang. My son is on the lookout for scary stuff. I’ve already mentioned the spider. There is Dracula, baring his fangs, and the hooded Grim Reaper, waving his scythe. I ease the minivan close to the curb so that he and his younger siblings can get the warm shivers — that lovely feeling of being scared when you know you are safe with your loved ones.
I also keep in an eye on the clock. If we stay out too late, we risk the parent’s nightmare of kids turning into grumpy monsters the next morning.
But it’s hard for me to resist their pleas to keep driving. My wife doesn’t protest as I turn the minivan around one more time. Teenage parties and dating are still a long way down the road. If only for a little drive, I can pretend that most scary things are make believe. I can’t make time last; I can make it count.
There’s a house at the end of a cul-de-sac with two giant, inflatable eyeballs on the roof. As the kids squeal with delight, I look in the rearview mirror to catch a glimpse of their joy.
Andrew Taylor-Troutman is the author of Gently Between the Words: Essays and Poems. He is the pastor of Chapel in the Pines Presbyterian Church. He and his wife, also an ordained minister, parent three children and a dog named Ramona.
