A Warm Christmas Story... NOT: How I made a woman abandon her child

Well it’s Christmas time and that seems to be the season to share sweet stories to warm the heart and spread good cheer.

I’m not going to do that.

I am going to share a story though, it’s one about Halloween.  My wife and I tend to have a bit of the child in us, meaning we never really grew up.  In my case, I’m sure it’s because my mother dropped me on my head one to many times.  Something having to do with slippery hands due to soapy dish water or something.  Or so she says.  Because we never really grew up, when Halloween would roll around, we would dress up, maybe go out, or at the very least hand out candy (or in my case pretend to hand it out while eating it).  When our daughter was found under the cabbage patch, we were dutiful parents and took her out trick-or-treating, dressing her up in cute little outfits.  In fact, she was born on October 23^rd, and on the 31^st, she was dressed as a pumpkin.  A tiny, cute little pumpkin.  As she grew older, we came to realize she wasn’t really into the whole going door to door thing.  So, we decorated our house, and as a family handed out candy.

Before my daughter was born, I put together my own special costume.  I had a cloak made from black velvet made (like the figure of death), found a really sweet skull mask with while curly hair and I made glasses with red LED’s in them (yet another invention I came up with first and never made money on).  When I dressed up in this costume and stood still, no one would ever think I was actually a person, which of course, made for some good laughs when I suddenly grabbed them.

Well for decorating, we went all out.  Fake coffin in the yard, black lights, a strobe light, skulls and bones in the yard, scary music playing, the whole nine yards.  It was quite the site and people started coming from miles away to see our house every year, along with the guy in the costume (me) who would suddenly become “real” and scare you.

We had to be careful though, because the smaller kids were usually to scared to come up the house to get their candy, even with their parents holding their hands.  But being careful, we rarely had problems.  The parents and older kids loved it and that was the target audience.  The little kids got their candy, and older kids and parents got a little scare from me either before or after they walked by me to get candy from my wife and daughter.

But one year, we had a really good laugh over one poor lady that got just a little freaked out.  I was standing in my usual spot, totally still, the kids were streaming by whispering about how scary that statue was when this lady, her sister, and their kids came up.  This lady was particularly vocal about how creepy I was.  When their kids got their candy and started to walk away, I stepped in behind them, just walking along, not saying a word.  As we reached the end of the driveway, the kids coming up were making a lot of noise about me and she happened to be laughing the whole creepy guy thing off.  As she turned to her sister to say something, she saw me out of the corner of her eye and that is when the fun started.

This woman dropped her kid’s hand and started running.

There was only one thing for me to do.  I started running after her.

She hit the end of the driveway, screaming like Jack The Ripper was after her and took a left turn.  I was right on her heels.

Now, I must clarify something at this point.  I’m not a small guy.  When this happened, I wasn’t small then either.  Not as big as now, but heh, still bigger than average.  This woman?  Large.  I’m not making fun, but this is important.  Why?  Keep reading.

About 20 feet down the road, this woman, who was still screaming like a little boy being chased by a Catholic Priest, looked behind her and saw me right on her heels.  At this point something amazing happened.

You know the Road Runner Cartoons?  Where the Coyote, on a rocket, or whatever, gets right on the Road Runner’s heels and that bird beep beep’s and is GONE?

Perfect replica in real life.  This woman was G.O.N.E.  I couldn’t have caught her if I was on a jet.

Mean?  Maybe.  Childish? Certainly. Fun? Definitely.  Don’t judge, it’s not like she abandoned her kid completely, her sister was there remember?

The funny part about this, besides making a large woman forget her kid and run like mad, was that she came by the house this year.  I wasn’t in my costume and I was standing there and she said to me:

“You probably don’t remember me, but years ago you scared me and chased me down the street”.

Oh I remembered her alright.  We shared a few laughs over it and hugged.  Then she started to leave and left me with this parting comment:

“I’m glad you aren’t wearing that get-up this year.”

Mistake?  Oh yes.  I still have that costume, and I will be ready and waiting on her next year.  Maybe I can catch her this time, but seriously?  I doubt it.