My boys will pull off grasshopper legs, drown black widows and lick slugs. They chuck fake grenades at each other and wrestle until one of them is screaming.
They love man-eating sharks and poisonous snakes.
So it shouldn’t have surprised me when they wanted to be creepy characters for Halloween.
I should have seen this coming.
But I don’t like horrific monsters. I don’t love skeletons and I hate spiders.
I don’t like blood, guts or death.
That said, I had to let go this year when it came to controlling what my boys wanted to be for Halloween. Sadly, long gone are the days when I can hold a cute pumpkin’s hand as he knocks on the door and shouts: “Trick or Treat.” No longer will I get to drive Hook around town.
This year I will be escorting a zombie and Dracula.
And although I’d rather they went for a cute family-themed costume – like the year we made dad be the bald Voldemort while I was Hermione and my two oldest were Harry and Ron, or last year when we were a pack of Ghostbusters who each had a proton pack – I had to come to grips with the fact that those days are gone.
Instead of grumbling, I decided there could be worse things that my kids wanted to do. They could be blowing up neighbor’s mailboxes or lighting a grassy field on fire. They could be test driving my minivan or trying to steal candy bars from the grocery store.
All they want to do is to walk around stiff-armed and groaning or swishing around a cape while chanting, “I vant to suck your blood.”
No. Big. Deal. Really.
Despite my dislike for creepy and disturbing I’ve decided to roll with it. I’ve decided I have to let go a little, one costume at a time.
So tonight I will walk around a purple-skinned eyes rolling into the back of his head moaning zombie and a caped blood-sucking pale-faced vampire.
And I will do it while smiling. I will also be dressed as a princess and will be carrying my cute one-year-old frog prince. At least I still get to pick one of my kids’ costumes.
Boogers on the Wall 