Out of the Game and The Mad Gardener

I owe so many people things right now and I apologize, I really am getting to it. Work has been crazy these past few days and to make matters worse, on Sunday I bit off a piece of my tongue. And then it got all swollen and I was supposed to be careful but it started feeling better. And I bit it again yesterday while trying to eat pizza. Now it’s so swollen that I can hardly talk and I have a big thing at the White House on Monday. I sound like a retard, currently, and I drool when I talk. I may need to pass it off to someone else at my job. And…AND…I’m meeting Frank Frazetta with the DC Conspiracy on Saturday and I won’t be able to say shit. I can’t even eat solid foods; I’ve been eating oatmeal and shit. Tonight I had some chili but I practically had to drink it like it was soup. My tongue is all bleeding and bruised and sore as fuck. Whatever, story time.

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I know it’s not Halloween or anything like that but a picture I found combined with my lost in the woods story from yesterday made me really want to talk about Halloween.

Growing up I had two costumes that I alternated every Halloween. I was either a ninja or Jason (from Friday the 13th). Every year I got some sheets and made a ninja costume or put on some ratty clothes, hockey mask, fake blood and grabbed a fake knife.

The Jason costume was always the best because my pops, knowing I was a bit of a wuss, would always start to poke me when I wore it, prompting me to say, “Cut it ooouuuuttt” in the whiniest voice imaginable. Big, tough, Jason Voorhees. (The constant use of Jason costume is what popped into my head when I was thinking about the woods story from yesterday, by the way).

Then there came that year when I hit the “too old to trick or treat, too young to get wasted” age where Halloween became pointless. So, I didn’t get a costume. A couple of my friends, however, decided to go to this Halloween teen-thing. I decided I wanted to go with them but I needed a costume and I needed it fast.

I didn’t have a Jason mask and there was no time to make a ninja outfit. So I decided to get creative. I started by getting some of my father’s work clothes. He was a printer and he always wore those drab, vaguely scary work clothes. I matched them up with some dirty ‘ole sneakers and messed my hair up, trying to look like a serial killer.

I didn’t look evil enough. I put my fingerless leather glove on my right hand and my bowling glove on my left hand (yes, I bowled…on a league, no less). Still not quite right, I needed to get some props.

Plastic meat cleaver was a given. It even fit nicely in my shirt pocket. Fake shotgun strapped to the back – every madman has a shotgun, right?

I think if I would have left it like that, I probably would have been fine.

But then I attached a wrench to my belt. I don’t know, a wrench could be scary. You know, you can hit someone with it. Maybe turn off their water. I figured it made me look more bad-ass to have a wrench hanging from my belt.

I think if I would have left it like that, I probably would have gotten a few laughs, but otherwise I would have been fine.

But then came the coup-de-grace. The accessory that will forever live in infamy amongst my friends and relatives. The accessory that my own parents made fun of me for. I told them they didn’t understand, they told me I looked like an idiot. Ladies and gentleman, I present to you, the mad gardener:



That’s right. A weed-whacker. A crazed serial killer with a weed whacker. I don’t know why I thought a weed whacker made for a good murder weapon. Despite the fact that you need to plug it in (I’m pretty sure that string around my waste is the chord, which first comes up through my shirt and then around), that little plastic thing that whips around might scratch someone, at worst.

But goddamn I thought everyone would know I was a serial killer.

Nope.

Every single person thought I was a gardener. Despite the cleaver, the shotgun and the horrifying wrench. They saw through all of that, looked at the weed-whacker and thought I was a gardener. I didn’t win the costume contest.

The only failed costume attempt that beats this, in my opinion, was when my father dressed like Mr. T and everyone thought he was an alien. Still looking for that picture. Best part of the costume? We had no gold, ‘cause we were poor, so my pops made fake jewelry out of tin-foil. Classic.

Labels: mitc

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