Tricks, No Treats
More Tales Of Misspent Youth
All Hallow's Eve. A night where children's minds turn to plastic pumpkins full of bite-size candy bars, and prankster's minds turn to novel ways to annoy neighbors.
I'm afraid I've spent many of my past Halloweens doing dastardly deeds that really ought to be forgotten about. However, the blogbeast must be fed, and its favorite meals are made up of the rancid underbelly of our sordid pasts.
To be completely honest, I'm still not entirely sure how I made it out of adolescence without some outraged person beating me senseless with a two by four, or imbedding a shotgun-sized dose of rocksalt into my rapidly retreating buttocks. I pulled some really spectacularly stupid pranks. The ones on Halloween really stand out, since that was the night we pulled out all the stops.
F'rinstance, there was the time me & my buddies went trick-or-treating, despite being much too old for the pastime. I guess we were freshmen or sophomores in high school that year.
Our costumes were simple. Long army surplus rain ponchos, with the hoods drawn tightly over our heads. I seem to recall masks or bandannas tied over our faces, until they grew too stifling. Oh, yeah, the long shiny machetes. That really rounded out the costume.
Our modus operandi was to approach the unsuspecting homeowner's front door obliquely, snaking through the shrubbery. We'd pounce upon the porch, and commence to hammering upon the door with the butt ends of the machetes, loudly ordering "OPEN... THE DOOR!!!!" to the hapless occupants.
Usually, the homeowner would give up the goods. I think they were afraid not to. Every so often, someone would ask us if we weren't a bit old for trick-or-treating. Bastards! How dare they deny us candy!
In those cases, (and a few others, just 'cause we were grotty kids) the pumpkin that usually sat outside their door would be the vessel that received our adolescent wrath. We'd wander away until they shut the door, then leap back to the pumpkin. Our shiny blades would go 'Snicker-Snack!', and the jack-o-lantern would be reduced to a heap of orange debris. Then, we'd dash off to the next block for more handfuls of fun-pak Skittles and gory pumpkincide.
Then, there was the year of the Hefty Lawn bags. Over in a more affluent part of town, when Halloween season rolled around, it also meant that those huge capitalist lawns needed a lot of leaf-raking. This led to large piles of leaf-filled trash bags left by the roadside for trash pickup.
It didn't take a lot of effort to realize the potential for pranking with all those leaves. No, we didn't dump 'em in the school pool, or set 'em alight. Too much effort in one case, and too little return in the latter.
Nope, we used the bags of leaves as camouflage. See, when you're young, and don't own or maintain a car, nothing's funnier than bombarding cars with water balloons and/or chicken ova. The damage potential to paint and passenger doesn't occur to you, 'cause you're just a nitwit kid.
So, after arming ourselves with aforementioned water balloons and several cartons of Grade AA Jumbo eggs, a couple of buddies and I secreted ourselves amidst several ginormous piles of leaves alongside a bend of the road in Ritzy-ville. When a car came along, it would get pelted from three different directions at once. When the outraged passenger squealed to a stop and leaped out to search the underbrush, there was no one to be found.
Once or twice, an especially bright motorist would commence to kicking the pile of Hefty bags. They even rooted through the pile looking for a kid. They didn't find any, as the kids (who *were* in the piles) were completely wrapped from head to toe in leaf-filled Hefty bags. Except for a hole in the top bag for our faces (covered by a camo bandanna w/ eyehole cutouts), we looked just like a bag o' leaves.
We weren't caught, and expended our ordnance before retiring to a local condominium community to trick or treat dressed as "suburban leaf mummies". "Joey" caught a good kick to the ribs from one of the drivers, but the leaves mostly muffled it. Fun Halloween, except we itched like mad for the next week from all the leaf mites.
Finally, there's Streetlight Superman. But I think I'll leave that tale for next Halloween...
All Hallow's Eve. A night where children's minds turn to plastic pumpkins full of bite-size candy bars, and prankster's minds turn to novel ways to annoy neighbors.
I'm afraid I've spent many of my past Halloweens doing dastardly deeds that really ought to be forgotten about. However, the blogbeast must be fed, and its favorite meals are made up of the rancid underbelly of our sordid pasts.
To be completely honest, I'm still not entirely sure how I made it out of adolescence without some outraged person beating me senseless with a two by four, or imbedding a shotgun-sized dose of rocksalt into my rapidly retreating buttocks. I pulled some really spectacularly stupid pranks. The ones on Halloween really stand out, since that was the night we pulled out all the stops.
F'rinstance, there was the time me & my buddies went trick-or-treating, despite being much too old for the pastime. I guess we were freshmen or sophomores in high school that year.
Our costumes were simple. Long army surplus rain ponchos, with the hoods drawn tightly over our heads. I seem to recall masks or bandannas tied over our faces, until they grew too stifling. Oh, yeah, the long shiny machetes. That really rounded out the costume.
Our modus operandi was to approach the unsuspecting homeowner's front door obliquely, snaking through the shrubbery. We'd pounce upon the porch, and commence to hammering upon the door with the butt ends of the machetes, loudly ordering "OPEN... THE DOOR!!!!" to the hapless occupants.
Usually, the homeowner would give up the goods. I think they were afraid not to. Every so often, someone would ask us if we weren't a bit old for trick-or-treating. Bastards! How dare they deny us candy!
In those cases, (and a few others, just 'cause we were grotty kids) the pumpkin that usually sat outside their door would be the vessel that received our adolescent wrath. We'd wander away until they shut the door, then leap back to the pumpkin. Our shiny blades would go 'Snicker-Snack!', and the jack-o-lantern would be reduced to a heap of orange debris. Then, we'd dash off to the next block for more handfuls of fun-pak Skittles and gory pumpkincide.
Then, there was the year of the Hefty Lawn bags. Over in a more affluent part of town, when Halloween season rolled around, it also meant that those huge capitalist lawns needed a lot of leaf-raking. This led to large piles of leaf-filled trash bags left by the roadside for trash pickup.
It didn't take a lot of effort to realize the potential for pranking with all those leaves. No, we didn't dump 'em in the school pool, or set 'em alight. Too much effort in one case, and too little return in the latter.
Nope, we used the bags of leaves as camouflage. See, when you're young, and don't own or maintain a car, nothing's funnier than bombarding cars with water balloons and/or chicken ova. The damage potential to paint and passenger doesn't occur to you, 'cause you're just a nitwit kid.
So, after arming ourselves with aforementioned water balloons and several cartons of Grade AA Jumbo eggs, a couple of buddies and I secreted ourselves amidst several ginormous piles of leaves alongside a bend of the road in Ritzy-ville. When a car came along, it would get pelted from three different directions at once. When the outraged passenger squealed to a stop and leaped out to search the underbrush, there was no one to be found.
Once or twice, an especially bright motorist would commence to kicking the pile of Hefty bags. They even rooted through the pile looking for a kid. They didn't find any, as the kids (who *were* in the piles) were completely wrapped from head to toe in leaf-filled Hefty bags. Except for a hole in the top bag for our faces (covered by a camo bandanna w/ eyehole cutouts), we looked just like a bag o' leaves.
We weren't caught, and expended our ordnance before retiring to a local condominium community to trick or treat dressed as "suburban leaf mummies". "Joey" caught a good kick to the ribs from one of the drivers, but the leaves mostly muffled it. Fun Halloween, except we itched like mad for the next week from all the leaf mites.
Finally, there's Streetlight Superman. But I think I'll leave that tale for next Halloween...
posted by El Capitan | 2:37 PM
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