Bob the Skeleton

Somehow, I managed to suck Jeremy into the whole Halloween thing after all. Well, sort of. He got it into his head that we needed a rather large skeleton to display on the upstairs balcony. And that's how we ended up with Bob.

The week before Halloween, we were back in North Carolina--Jeremy for work, and I for my dissertation defense (I passed, I'm gonna graduate, woohoo!!). There were several stores I wanted to hit that we don't have down here, including World Market. I somewhat grumblingly convinced Jeremy to spend half a day shopping with me, but he was well rewarded. As soon as we walked through the World Market doors, there was Bob, a four foot tall plastic skeleton. Jeremy was immediately enamored, and we left the store with Bob in tow. Bob was then propped up in the back seat of the car, Bob was taken into our friends', Marc and Jen's, home, where he scared the crap out of their little girl, Maya, when she woke up in the morning, and to hide Bob, Jeremy then stuck him in bed with me while I was still sleeping--not exactly the most thrilling thing to wake up to.

I would say Bob came to his final resting place on the balcony once we got home, but that hasn't quite been the case (more on this later). However, Halloween night, he was proudly perched on the balcony, overlooking the stampede of trick or treaters. Yes, stampede! Neither Jeremy or I knew what to expect for Halloween. I thought I had bought way too much candy. I quickly realized how wrong I was!

Around 7 p.m., we had our first trick or treater, and the last around 9:30 p.m. It was a nice evening, so Jeremy and I decided we'd sit on the front porch and hand out candy. From about 7 to 7:30 p.m., it was a small but steady trickle. Then chaos! At one point, on top of the people walking, we had roughly 5 cars pulled up along our house. Plus, on the side of the house, a tractor pulling a hay bale-lined trailor with about 17 more children and all their parents pulled up. To top it off, a police officer was parked in his golf car near our house watching all the activity. It quickly became apparent that the $30 worth of candy I bought was not going to last the whole night.

In fact, by 8:30 p.m., almost all the candy was gone. Poor Jeremy was stuck running to Dollar General and the Piglet, clad in his fuzzy slilppers, where he joined a small horde of men whose wives had sent them on the same mission.

I was starting to feel a little guilty, though, because right after I frantically sent him out on the candy quest, the number of trick or treaters died down dramatically. Then, not one minute before he got back, I was mobbed again: one group of about 20 older kids trick or treating together and two more truckloads of kids--yes truckloads; they were all riding in the back end of the trucks. After another hour of this, they finally stopped coming. Once again, we were almost out of candy. At times, it was impossible to count all the kids, but we pretty much figured from what we could count that we had somewhere over 150 trick or treaters.

And this brings us back to Bob. Having spent the night delighting kids who walked up the sidewalk, it was no time to retire Bob for the year--or it should have been. Except that Jeremy discovered Bob's hidden potential. I came home from work earlier this week to find Bob dressed to go hunting, complete with hat and a rifle. On Wednesday, I bought Bob a santa hat. Yesterday I came home to find Bob dressed in the santa hat, a Nine Inch Nails t-shirt and my black, strappy high heels. I think Bob might be a little confused. On the other hand, this started my mind going. For President's Day, we can get Bob a beard, wig, and one of those tricorn hats. Valentine's day, some little cupid wings and a bow and arrow. Easter, bunny ears. . . The holiday possiblities for Bob are endless! I think for Christmas, I will dress him up some more, stick the antlers on the dogs, the little santa cap on the cat, and take a "family" photo for our Christmas card!