"Three Little Fishies"

Happy Halloween everyone!

I know, I know, Halloween is pretty much over for another year.  In fact as I start to write this, there are only 42 minutes of it left.  But I had an experience  tonight that I would bet large amounts of money,  no one else, anywhere, ever had.  And I want to tell you all about it.

As with all of my stories, there is a bit of background that I must tell before I get to tonight's events.  It all started on Halloween two years ago.  As usually happens the largest segment  trick or treaters starts out as soon as it gets dark, before dark are some of the very little kids who have no clue what is going on, sometimes even still being carried by mom or dad.  They are completely adorable and I love the look of utter confusion on their faces and their various efforts to say some semblance of  "trick or treat".  So cute, but so funny.

Once dark hits though, the kids begin to get older.  It's almost a chronological progression.  The later the time, the older the kids.  By about 7:30 or so we are getting the middle school and early high school kids, the 11 to 14 crowd.  Things begin to thin out as the younger kids are taken home with their overflowing pumpkins and bags.

So two years ago, at somewhere around 7:30 or so, the doorbell rang and a small group of girls who looked to be around 12 or 13 shouted out "Trick or Treat" as I opened the door.  They were a happy, giggling group of maybe 2 or 3 girls.  I cannot recall exactly how the conversation went, I think I made a comment about one of their costumes which had something to do with fish (she might have been some sort of aquarium or some such thing.)  Anyway, as frequently happens, it reminded me of a song, soI sang a couple of bars of "Three Little Fishies," a song my mom used to sing when I was a little girl.  Evidently the girls hadn't ever heard it and one of them asked me if I knew the whole song.  Well, of course, I did.  So I sang it and the girls laughed and loved it.  As I gave out the candy the girls were extremely polite; they thanked me for the candy AND for singing for them and they went on their way.  They were a nice group and I enjoyed talking to them, but there were more kids coming up the walk and it was time to move on.

Well, the next Halloween (which would have been last year), around the same time, the doorbell rang and on the porch stood a slightly larger group (maybe 5 or 6).  When I opened the door, one of them said, "Hi, do you remember that last year you sang for my friends and I??  Of course, I remembered.  She then said, "We brought a couple of our friends with us tonight.  Could you sing the Little Fishies song for them too?  They've never heard it either."  Well, that was a real surprise.  I couldn't imagine that these girls would have remembered something like that for a whole year.  So of course, I sang the song again for them, with all the verses I could remember.  Well, they laughed and applauded, and complimented my singing and they told me that they were part of the choir at their school.  We chatted a little, I gave them their candy, we waved goodbye and shaking my head with a little wonder, I turned to the next group.

Okay, fast forward to tonight.  You can probably guess what happened.  At about 7:30 again the doorbell, when I opened the door there was a group of at least 15 girls!  They were probably 14 and 15 by now.  The girl from the first year, smiled and said "Hi, Remember us??"  You sang for us before.  These are all the girls from our Vaudeville group from school.  Would you sing for us again, please?"   I couldn't believe it, but I said sure and asked if they wanted 3 Little Fishies again!  Several said, no, just sing whatever you want to!  So I sang  "Strong Woman Number" from a show called I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking it on the Road, written by Gretchen Cryer.  (I chose that because I was pretty sure I knew all the words!!)  They smiled and laughed through the whole things (it's a great song.)  They loved it!  When I finished they applauded enthusiastically, and smiled, and thanked me again!  While giving them the candy, one of girls who had been standing near the back wiggled her way through group to the front and she looked at me and with a little hesitance asked, "Were you on Broadway?"   I smiled at her and said, "Oh no, honey, I've never been on Broadway."  She smiled sweetly and said, "Well, you should have been!  You are really good."

Oh. My. Word.  I was blown away.   I'm no where near that good a singer, but to think this sweet girl thought I could have been just felt unbelievably good.  And to think that this group of girls comes back each year just to ask me to sing them a song....what a unbelievable compliment.  Even if they never come back, I will never, ever forget these lovely girls who are in the process of learning to love music just as much as I do.  I wish them all a future filled with the music they love and I hope that one day some of them will be called on to entertain another group of girls who value music even more than Halloween Candy!!

I am touched down to my soul!  Bless their dear sweet hearts!

"I Got Plenty of Nothin' "

They started arriving at about 6:30 p.m.  It wasn't even dark yet, which was unusual in and of itself.  The came in hordes, with full-grown witches, and baseball players, and even a pilot, as escorts who walked down the middle of the street.  Their charges ran at top speed in five different directions up to the doors.  Sometimes they rang the doorbell, more often they knocked, and a time or two they peered in through the glass window. 

The first few sets were my favorites.  The little bitty kids, sometimes being carried, sometimes carrying pillowcases almost bigger than they were.  They would be clinging to the witch's or pilot's (mom or dad) hand for all they were worth.  Eyes big and very unsure of what was supposed to be  happening.  After prompting they would either whisper or holler, some variation of "Trick or Treat" and look straight up at me as I brought the basket to the door.  This group you have to watch closely.  They are fond of pushing their whole hand into the candy basket and grabbing as much as they can hold.  Almost always they put it back when mom or dad says so.  They watched me drop 2 pieces of some candy or other into their pillowcase or pumpkin and turn around to leave.  As they start to run (or toddle quickly) the mom or dad prompts again "Say thank you!" or "Happy Halloween".  When the little angel, cowboy, ninja, princess, or raggedy ann, repeats the phrase it sometimes even sounds like "thank you" or "happy Halloween".  Not always you understand, but sometimes.

As darkness fell the kids got progressively older.  The costumes got progressively more clever and they groups got bigger and louder and more exuberant!  Nobody needed prompting; they started yelling trick or treat in the driveway!  And they just kept coming! 

At 7:40 p.m. I opened the last of the big bags of candy.  Adding up all the candy we had bought, there were about 400 individual pieces of candy.  By about 8:15 p.m. even though I had cut back to one piece each, I ran out of candy!  And still they came!  

I started handing out pennies!  By that time it was mostly teens and bigger kids. I had to admit that "I Got Plenty of Nothin'.  I kept apologizing that I had no more candy, but the kids uniformly were gracious and accepted the couple of pennies each with aplomb!  I lost track of how many pennies I gave out, but it was probably around 50 or 60 cents total, but that means there were at least 25 more kids after I ran out of Twizzlers, Jolly Rogers, Paydays, and lollipops!  It was obvious I wasn't the only one to run out of candy as one by one neighboring houses turned off their outside lights, the universal signal that Halloween was over at that house!

At 8:30 the rush slowed to a trickle and by 8:45 it was done.  The were gone like they had never been there at all. Not a ghost, or a zombie, or a ballerina in sight.  Vanished into the night.  The street remained empty.  Silence returned to the neighborhood.  I turned off our outside lights.

After being descended upon by somewhere between 250 and 275 costumed, polite, well-behaved children, Halloween was over at our house!

I guess next year we'll have to buy six big bags of candy!  Maybe I should just get "Good 'n' Plenty" (remember them?) to begin with....lol!...or I'll end up with Plenty of Nothin' all over again!

"Three Little Words"

“From ghoulies and ghosties

 and long-leggedy beasties

and things that go bump in the night, good Lord, deliver us!”

 

 

FROM

MELLO-BOO

THE BIG GHOST

WITCHLET
RA-TA-TCAT
FLORA-DORA-BLE
AND

MADDIE-THE-GREAT-PUMPKIN

Oh, and what about those "Three Little Words"?? 
You'll be hearing them a lot tonight....

"TRICK OR TREAT"




BOO!

"Monster Mash"

Halloween is coming up soon.  Somehow I am not as inspired this year as I have been in the past.  The Big Guy even went up to the attic and brought down all my Autumn decorations and Halloween stuff....I hadn't even mentioned it once!  (That is a first!)

Maddie-the-Great will be spending the night here tonight, so I am hoping that she will help me put out the outdoor Halloween stuff.  Doing it with her just might give me the inspiration I need.  We'll see.

Last year I really expanded my "stuff" for this time of year, due, in fact, to the wonderful ideas I had seen on so many different blogs.  I bought a lot of stuff and I really got into it.  This year??  Not so much.

Part of the problem, I think, is I really don't care for what I am seeing in the stores this year.  Have you noticed?  I assume what is happening here is happening everywhere.  The whimsy is missing!  There isn't any "fun" stuff!  The vast majority of things for sale this year are really scary!  Skulls, severed, bleeding limbs, grave stones, rats (RATS!!),  big (really BIG) hairy spiders and all manner of other creepy, crawlies, ghouls, zombies, vampires, fake blood....it's enough to give you nightmares!

It isn't that I think there is anything sinister about Halloween.  I'm not worried about devil worship, or other such nonsense that some people are always ranting about.  The origins of Halloween were a mix of superstition and religion and may have had some of those sinister elements, but that was a long time ago and now Halloween is about 99% about fun for kids!  That's all.  A chance for kids to dress up in costumes and go get free candy!!  That's about as much fun as a little kid can have!  I support that wholeheartedly. 
This current trend toward the really scary stuff is all related to the recent success of books like Twilight and the flood of books and movies about monsters, vampires and zombies.  I've never gotten the appeal of any of those, but then I'm not a teenager anymore.  And lets face it, is there anything scarier than a teenager in general??  :)

I don't want to turn my house into a dark, scary, creepy haunted house thing.  We get a lot of little kids and I think some of the stuff I've seen is too frightening for a child under 5!  I like the cute, fun stuff....friendly little ghosts, flying broomsticks, funny pumpkins, confused witches, happy smiling kids!  Nothing threatening or disgusting! 

A lot of it has to do with the companies that make or sell Halloween things.  Manufacturers of novelties always are updating their line to come up with new, different, and very profitable merchandise each year.  This year they seem to have focused on creepy.  Well, no thank you....not interested.  I hope they get over this scary stuff soon.

The only kind of "Monster Mash" I am interested in,  is the song you dance to!


BOO!

"The Party's Over"

It's over....my boos! have turned to boo-hoos.  Yep, "The Party's Over!"  It makes me sad every year to take down my outside ghosties and ghoulies.  In spite of the spooky nature of Halloween decorations, houses that are decorated feel and look light-hearted to me.  Its a happy time and I'm sorry to see it go.

After the flood of kids we had last year, we were not sure how much candy we should stock in order to meet the demand.  Ultimately, we went with the "More is better" concept and it ended up with huge bags of candy all over the kitchen.  But we had enough!  And most of the stuff that's left (I hope) will go with the Big Guy in to work where they will scarf it down in short order.

So how did it go??  It was great, We had nearly as many kids as last year.  Although we didn't get an accurate count exactly but as near as we can figure,  about 180 kids come to our door.  They came in a fairly steady stream from about 6:15 until about 9:15 p.m. and then it was done!  It was as if somebody turned off a switch and all the kids were pulled off the streets.  Odd!  No dwindling down. Just chaos then nothing!  

One of the candies we gave out was candy corn and some of the kids were really excited about getting that! You would have thought it was something really special!

There were adorable little kids in sweet costumes, medium sized kids in funny or scary costumes, at least six Cleopatra's, lots of "The Scream" faces, some with oozing blood (REALLY spooky), a few older kids in really imaginative and clever costumes.  They were all fun to see.

Every single one of those kids was polite, happy to get what we gave, and each one said thank you! (Except for the really little ones who had pretty much no idea what was going on!) There were parents in costumes. I saw nothing sleazy or in poor taste. They, too, were polite, complimentary, and supportive of their kids. Not one bad incident, not one!


So Halloween will continue here for another year in its Spooky, Funny, and Traditional way. It's all about the kids and that's a good thing. That is how it was here.  Halloween is alive and well in Austin!

Just to finish up my Halloween report, here are some photos I promised to post.  I don't know why three of them are turned sideways.  I tried several things to make them post correctly but Blogger wasn't cooperating (Ha!  There's a surprise!)   The first one is from a cell phone, and just not very clear.  I'm sorry, but I think you can at least get the idea of what they show.

Oh, by the way, if you get a craving for something sweet, come on over.  We've even got some candy corn left!!  I'd be happy to share!

Maddie the Spy!
(Turned out pretty cute, didn't she?)



What happens when you get caught in a web! Watch out!
(Wish this picture was right side up!!) 



The Mantle Barnyard




"I took my troubles down to Madame Rue,
Your know the gypsy with the gold capped tooth...."



This is the rooster my mom embroidered years ago. 



The Big Guy in Costume!
(Even his closest friends would never recognize him!  LOL!)

Well, there you have it....Halloween 2010.  It was a HOOOOOOT!