Monday, November 2, 2009

A Cautionary Halloween Tale

Say you've promised a trusting friend you'll bring pumpkins to carve at her house on Halloween such that she and the small children she is hosting are relying on you to produce these pumpkins. And let's just say--for the sake of argument--that you wait until 3PM on Halloween to purchase aforesaid pumpkins.

SEE WHAT CAN HAPPEN?



That's right, though you'd think grocers on Halloween would be selling pumpkins like nobody's business, there are actually no pumpkins to be had on the day itself. No matter how many stores you visit (e.g., seven) or what increasingly desperate price you're willing to pay, there will be no pumpkins available. None.

And you will be forced to stand in line for twenty minutes at an insanely crowded East Tennessee Wal-Mart--thereby confirming your worst opinions of discount shopping--to purchase the best substitute you can think of: the lowly, non-orange, completely ridiculous . . . CANTALOUPE.

In my case, as it turned out, the other children had brought their own previously purchased pumpkins to the party. THEIR parents were thinking ahead. And the 500Jerk children are good-natured and old enough to be amused with being the only children in Knoxville having to carve melons on Halloween. But I know I will never EVER live down the day they had to carve cantaloupes on Halloween.

Because carving cantaloupes on Halloween? That?

That is just LAME.

6 comments:

jon hickman said...

Katie had Halloween gourds a year or two before I met her. I think cantaloupes are brilliant.

jon hickman said...

Plus you can eat the carvings without having to cook them.

500Jerk said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
500Jerk said...

Thanks for making me feel slightly less mortified.

Reading anything good?

jon hickman said...

Right now I'm going through a phase of rereading books I've read in the past. I just finished some Kingsolver and started Watership Down last night.

You?

500Jerk said...

Nope. I'm reading some deeply depressing futuristic Margaret Atwood novel right now. But only because I have nothing else to read. I'm thinking of getting Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs. And there's this Chronic City novel I'm kind of interested in.

Read The Outlander!