As I've mentioned before, Halloween is one of those holidays that matters less and less to me each year. I think that will change as Jim gets more excited about it, but for now it's still one which is more annoying than fun what with rounding up costumes and buying candy, which is surprisingly expensive. (It's also a little discouraging . . . I thought Tootsie Rolls would be a safe candy for me to buy, but it turns out I like them a lot better than I should.)
But there was one year where I really got into Halloween. I decided that my bedroom needed a haunted house theme. Since my bedroom was in the basement, it always had a sort of haunted house feel to it anyway -- you never knew if the blouse you tossed carelessly on the ground would have a wolf spider attached to it the next time you picked it up. But this year I wanted it to be really haunted. I had glorious plans for the decorations, the thrills, and the chills that would await any who dared enter.
I got started immediately, gathering construction paper and hunting down an empty boombox and tape cassette. When the rest of my family was elsewhere, I hurried and recorded myself screaming like a banshee for several seconds. I then propped up the boombox behind my door, attached an unsharpened pencil to my door via masking tape, and made it so that the pencil would hit the pause button whenever the door was open, unleashing my warbling fury on the world. After a bit of adjusting, it worked!
I then found a flesh-colored glove and filled it with water the best that I could. I stuck it in the freezer, preparing it for its life as the icy hand of death which would grab any intruders. I forgot about it for a while and busied myself cutting out construction paper pumpkins and witch silhouettes.
It was probably my dad who was the first to discover the terrors of my terrain. Instead of jumping when he heard my banshee cry, he just furrowed his brow for a moment, then peeked behind my door to see my little contraption. "This is cute," he probably said.
Over the next few weeks, there really weren't that many people who came into my bedroom. My siblings had some fun at first opening and closing my door to get the pause button to compress and release, making the screaming come in brief spurts. But that got old, and soon I was the only one to enter my room and hear the screams. And to be honest, it got kind of annoying. But I had to keep it there on principle. It was for Halloween, after all.
Thankfully, Halloween eventually came, and down came the decorations and banshee screaming. Time to decorate for Christmas.
A few months later, while I was sitting on my bed doing homework, my dad came in waving something hideous and icy. "Did you want this for anything? I found it in the freezer."
Come to think of it, I don't know how that icy hand of death would have fared in my bedroom anyway.
But there was one year where I really got into Halloween. I decided that my bedroom needed a haunted house theme. Since my bedroom was in the basement, it always had a sort of haunted house feel to it anyway -- you never knew if the blouse you tossed carelessly on the ground would have a wolf spider attached to it the next time you picked it up. But this year I wanted it to be really haunted. I had glorious plans for the decorations, the thrills, and the chills that would await any who dared enter.
I got started immediately, gathering construction paper and hunting down an empty boombox and tape cassette. When the rest of my family was elsewhere, I hurried and recorded myself screaming like a banshee for several seconds. I then propped up the boombox behind my door, attached an unsharpened pencil to my door via masking tape, and made it so that the pencil would hit the pause button whenever the door was open, unleashing my warbling fury on the world. After a bit of adjusting, it worked!
I then found a flesh-colored glove and filled it with water the best that I could. I stuck it in the freezer, preparing it for its life as the icy hand of death which would grab any intruders. I forgot about it for a while and busied myself cutting out construction paper pumpkins and witch silhouettes.
It was probably my dad who was the first to discover the terrors of my terrain. Instead of jumping when he heard my banshee cry, he just furrowed his brow for a moment, then peeked behind my door to see my little contraption. "This is cute," he probably said.
Over the next few weeks, there really weren't that many people who came into my bedroom. My siblings had some fun at first opening and closing my door to get the pause button to compress and release, making the screaming come in brief spurts. But that got old, and soon I was the only one to enter my room and hear the screams. And to be honest, it got kind of annoying. But I had to keep it there on principle. It was for Halloween, after all.
Thankfully, Halloween eventually came, and down came the decorations and banshee screaming. Time to decorate for Christmas.
A few months later, while I was sitting on my bed doing homework, my dad came in waving something hideous and icy. "Did you want this for anything? I found it in the freezer."
Come to think of it, I don't know how that icy hand of death would have fared in my bedroom anyway.
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