I Wish I May I Wish I Might

I wished for a pony when I was a kid. It never came. What about that red cowgirl suit complete with matching boots in the Sears and Roebuck catelog? Of course not. But I did get twin baby dolls for Christmas once. I think they were the hot item of the season that year because of the twins in Dick Tracey. Daddy always liked the comics. That was even before George Carlan, but they weren't that kind of comics. The other appropriate name was 'the funny paper' - not plural. As seriously as the Tracey strip was, you still found it in the funnies (short for funny paper). Are you following all this? Much of my writing is for my generation, but some of them can't find a blog; so for the younger set, I figure I'd better explain some things as I go along.

This was the first Halloween since 1988 that I did not live 1/2 block from the school where I taught. In the past I have done some or all of the following: put the car in the back yard, hand out chocolate bars to all teenagers, never give homework on Halloween night, never send a kid to the office during the week of H'ween, sit in the yard until midnight to catch the kid that egged my truck, call parents at 1:00 when I caught the kid that egged my truck, spend half a week's grocery money on candy so I could not possibly run out, park my car at a friend's house in the country and have her drive me back to my house at dusk dressed as little red riding hood so I could just sneak back in and not have to answer the door (that's what I did last year because things were getting so rough).

Ah, but this year. Here in my cul-du-sac house-sitting dream land, I bought the usual candy. And even if it made me nervous, my daughter insisted I didn't have to hide my car. Lo and behold, only about 20 kids showed up. None of them were over the age of 13! That beats the usual 12o kids, about half of them over 13. These kids were so polite. I gave out double the usual portions, and I still have candy and Pla-dough left. Don't tell C-dot, but I took the pumpkin in the house before I went to bed.

Gotta go. C-dot wants me to play "Farkle"?