Friday night was the PTA's Halloween Howl at my son's school (which will be my daughter's school in ten short months. Holy cow...). My wife is on the PTA. She was "volunteered" to coordinate and run the games section of the Halloween Howl (when the head of the PTA asked for volunteers, our four year old daughter shot her hand up like a rocket. That was the first, and last, time my wife brought either of the kids to a PTA meeting...)
So Friday, after a day's work, I get home, feed the kids, then load everyone into the truck to get to the school for the Halloween Howl. Spend 2+ hours chasing them around from games to Haunted Gym to dancing, etc. Come home, get them cleaned up and into bed so they'd be ready for...
Saturday. Saturday night was the Pack 113 Halloween party. I was "volunteered" to take over the running of the "Haunted Hallway" which had formerly been headed by one of the Den Leaders whose youngest son was finishing his Cub Scout career this year. I have only been with the Pack since August. I have no idea what to expect. A flurry of e-mails the past couple of weeks and a brief sketch of the layout, and I had a rudimentary plan: Three rooms with scary stuff, a hallway of terror, and a surprise at the end...
Arrived at the church at 3PM to set up. Troops are marshalled; rooms are cleared; plans are made/remade/adjusted. We manage to get all the props, actors, and scenery in place by 6PM when it starts. We have three "stations" - one room filled with witches (and a cauldron filled with dry ice); one room filled with ghosts and ghouls; and the piece de resistance (that's French for "kick-ass!"), the graveyard. In the boiler room of the church is a dark storage area with creeeepy stone walls, a dirt floor, and roughly hewn beams framing everything in. It was PERFECT for a hidden graveyard complete with zombies, grim reaper, even a human sacrifice...
Now, I am "Igor" the tour guide - I'm drawing from Ren Hoek, Marty Feldman in "Young Frankenstein", and Gollum for my inspiration here - which means that I am bringing each group through all three stations (and the "bonus scare" at the end). It also means that, unlike the people manning each station, I do not get a single second of rest for the 2½ hours the hallway is open... And, because I'm a hunchback, I'm dragging my feet, hunched over, talking like Kermit the frog on 'ludes...
And then there's a good hour of clean-up - major league bad karma to leave a church basement (where they would be holding Sunday school classes in less than 12 hours after the Halloween party) a mess...
So I finally drag my carcass home around 9:30 PM. Managed to stay awake for ~ 2 hours of the game, and went to bed when the Rockies rallied back from down 6-1 to only down 6-5. I missed the Sox rallying back. And Bruce isn't cutting me any slack, either:
Wait a minute. 10:38? Isn't that past your bedtime, Jay?
{Rodney} No respect, I gotta tell ya...{/Rodney}
That is all...
1 comment:
that sounds really awesome! (but I'm disappointed that there's no photos)
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