The Upstory

Halloween was last night and, despite a month of hype with Wal Mart selling every costume known to man and every candy ever created, we got not one trick-or-treater. Zero. Nada. The doorbell never rang, the dogs never barked, and I watched Helen Mirren reenact the story of when Queen Elizabeth dragged her feet in acknowledging the death of Princess Diana and England practically had a meltdown.

I’m not complaining about the no-shows. It was a good movie, uninterrupted, and I managed to dig out most of the Reese’s peanut butter cups from the bag of chocolate miniatures.

I don’t pull out all the stops for Halloween. I don’t think it’s a holiday. I’m always surprised that it lasts for a full month. My decorations are a plug-in pumpkin and a wooden sign that says “Boo.” I couldn’t find either one of these festive items when I went to look for them.

I had set up the bowl of candy and it was getting dark so I figured it was time to decorate the front porch. Then Glenn reminded me that I had Goodwilled our Halloween decorations during a cleaning frenzy earlier in the year.

We live in a rural-ish neighborhood where everyone has an acre of land, the houses are spaced far apart, there are no sidewalks, and no streetlights. Thus, ours is not a neighborhood that gets a lot of Halloween action. Thus, everyone knows who the trick-or-treaters are because they’re all the neighbor kids who in spite of their costumes still manage to act and sound like themselves.

A crowd of heroes and villains will show up at the front door and yell “Trick-or-Treat” or “Hi Mrs. Orgeron” and it’s a dead giveaway. Especially because not everyone knows how to pronounce my last name correctly. In fact, garbling my last name used to be how I knew the caller was a telemarketer (sorry, there’s no one here by that name, I’d say) back before Verizon invented the Scam-Call app and saved us all the trouble of answering the phone. But the neighbor kids know how to say my name and they also know my dogs’ names and the dogs know the kids and are pushing past the front door to greet them and share their food loot.

By the way, back in the age of B.C. (Before Children), Halloween was a time when Glenn and I wore costumes and went to parties. Memorably we went to one after beloved Rose Mofford became Arizona’s first woman governor, taking over for Ev Meacham who was our first impeached governor (there were a lot of Ev costumes that year). Anyway, my costume was a white wig styled in Rose’s Dairy Queen swirl up-do and her trademark red lipstick (I was told, “You look like you got hit in the mouth with an axe.”). Glenn dragged out his go-to costume, a gorilla mask and an ‘80s tuxedo and we were quite the couple, especially after a few drinks.

(By the way, back before “dress-for-success” became the watchword of the ambitious employee, Glenn actually showed up at work one day in his tux and gorilla mask. It was a red-letter day for the other corporate accountants, clad in their suits and ties and trying to crunch numbers with a straight face while sitting across from Gorilla-Boy. And no, it wasn’t Halloween nor was it the same day that Glenn had his annual performance review.)

Anyway, back to last night, which was definitely a Halloween Fail. I’m thinking that the trick-or-treaters either went to a party or had their own party and just never made it to my house. But I’m not putting too much thought into it because I woke up with a post-Halloween sugar high that I’m trying to stabilize with doses of caffeine. And Reese’s.