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Thursday, October 27, 2011



Halloween, the happiest and scariest time of year. A time to be scared for the fun of it, a time for haunted scary houses and thoughts of dead people coming to suck your blood or eat your brains. Halloween is the one time of year where it's ok to be scared of everything.

When I was a kid, I was scared of everything every single day of my life. I was scared of getting the beating that I knew I would get. I was scared of the boogie man who was actually the sperm donor. I was scared of the dark, I was scared of the light. I spent every waking moment scared of something. On Halloween night we would dress up as scary things like ghosts or pretty things like fairy princess'. Then  we would grab a pillow case and our little orange box from school, the UNICEF box that we received every year at school. People would have bowls of candy and another of pennies to put into the UNICEF box. It was a tradition that we did every single year, we would take the box of pennies to school the next day and hand it in. The teachers would send the money off to help poor children who had no food to eat or the opportunity to get an education. Anyway, we would head out trick or treating....the egg donor often driving the car and letting us out here and there to run around through the streets pretending to be something we weren't begging for candy and pennies. 

Before walking out the door we were always warned "No funny rhymes like "Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat" and no eating the candy! We were warned not to touch a single piece, never open a wrapper, never eat anything given to us because someone might have put a razor blade in it and it would cut off our tongues and we would bleed to death and die! 

OH THE TEMPTATION!

As we rode in the back seat we would try to sneak candy into our pockets so that she wouldn't know. We knew what was going to happen once we got home, we knew that once we entered that house with that candy we would never see that candy again. See the egg donor had to "test" the candy to make sure it wasn't poisoned or that it didn't have razor blades in it. If it looked tampered with (aka it was a piece of candy she didn't like) then it was thrown into the trash. If it looked like it might be ok, she would take a bite to be sure and then she would have to be 100% so she would eat the rest. She would sit there and eat the candy in front of us, torturing us by eating our candy and not letting us have a single piece. Sometimes I would sneak to the trash barrel after she went to bed and steal pieces of candy out of it. I had a spot in the back of my bureau where I stashed my candy, in my underwear where she wouldn't look or find it.....and I knew my siblings wouldn't go there either. The candy was safe from all. 

Perhaps she meant well, trying to protect us from harm. Perhaps she really did, in some sick weird way, think she was doing the right thing. Perhaps she thought it was good to keep us feeling helpless and under her control...I really don't know. All I do know is that my son will never experience that kind of Halloween night! Oh he'll get to go out trick or treating with his pillowcase and zombie costume, but he won't carry that UNICEF box (because the schools don't do that here) and he will not have his mother eating all his candy in front of him. I do go through the candy looking for anything that might be tampered with, I am smart enough to know  that there are people out there who would find it funny to drug kids or whatever. So I check, anything that looks iffy I toss. I take one candy bar for myself and all the dark chocolate goes to Hubby because he's the only one in the house who will eat it. I put all the rest in a bucket and it gets given out one or two pieces at a time when earned. I do have to limit him, I just don't have to take it away. 

This year, as in years past, I look forward to carving pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns, I look forward to going out with the boy as he trick or treats around the neighborhood, watching him be a child and gather candy from his neighbors. I look forward to hanging out with him afterward handing out candy to the stragglers and pumping up on sugar bombs. I don't really look forward to the sugar bomb battle (since it will be a school night he is going to need to go to bed at a descent hour regardless) and I don't look forward to the battle of the bulge as the candy sits in the house calling my name and teasing me lol. 
Personally, I think the egg donor, in her own way, thought she was doing right by us. I think she thought she was making good decisions regardless of how we felt about it. She could often be heard saying "Spare the rod, spoil the child". I guess she didn't want us to be spoiled, she just took it too far. I can now see these things because I have let the anger go, I have decided to not live in fear and to move forward in my life. For me, this is like the day after Halloween. I don't have to be scared anymore because the monster has been revealed as the sad and pathetic person she was. She's not so scary anymore, the sperm donor isn't even scary anymore, I now fully realize that the only way they can hurt me now is if I choose to allow them to haunt me. I am choosing to know in my heart that it's all just a memory.

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Happy Halloween Folks and please.....be safe out there. Have some fun trick or treating, going to parties, whatever you do to celebrate this fun holiday. Just be sure not to eat the candy in front of your kids.....cause that's just plain mean!


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