If Your A Crank And You Know It, Clap Your Hands

Confession: I really don't like Halloween.

I know, I know. It makes me Crank #1 around here but I can't help it. I wish I liked the whole thing - dressing up, candy, walking around the neighborhood - but I really, really don't.

Fortunately I have not passed on this possibly somewhat Puritanical dislike of Halloween to my children. They embrace it enthusiastically and badger, I mean, nag, I mean, force, I mean, ask me to deck out the house with some scary effects and help get their costumes ready. They have had some good costumes over the years. Of course there was the requisite princess for Lucy for a couple of years and Finn was once Harry Potter. But more often, they have been a little more creative in their thinking. Finnian was an excellent Tintin - it helped that he looks just like him anyway. Lucy was Katherine Hepburn's character, Susan, in Bringing Up Baby one year, to the sometimes delight and sometimes deep confusion of our neighbors.

We may be crossing yet another threshold this year, however. Finnian is still undecided but he will most likely be some kind of vague ghoulish kind of creature that carries many weapons. I think it is a teenage thing.

Lucy still likes to work very hard to find just the right idea. The year before she was Katherine Hepburn, she was a leaf bag. For people not living in New York, a leaf bag was a brown paper bag that the city handed out to its residents to use to gather their fall leaves in that were then collected and made into compost. The leaf bag was a good costume. It was good because it was so easy - cut a few holes, glue on some leaves and voila.

This year, I am not geting off so easy. No, this year, Lucy wants the Mirror Ball Suit.



I am not kidding.