It's like everyone in my neighborhood got together today and was like, "Let's burn stuff!" Actually, less "stuff" (though my hick neighbors aren't adverse to burning tires or other random noxious objects) as much as plain old leaves. But leaves smoke badly, and there are a million better ways to dispose of leaves, so I can only assume these people just like burning things, as their previous "burn tires or other random noxious objects" behavior has shown in the past. I took a walk around the ol' hood, and there were at least five or six people burning leaves. It was actually kind of cool though, in a disgusting "I'll probably die from lung cancer now" sort of way. It was around dusk, and all the smoke hanging in the air looked like fog, and it is Halloween....

Speaking of which, 6 kids came to our door. We used to be a hotbed of trick or treat activity. But since my generation grew up, nada. Now there's only old people on our street, and no one wants to walk all the way over to our end because everyone's yard's so big, which means all the houses are far apart, which means it IS a heck of a big spot for a little kid to get all the way around. It was the bane of my existance, back when I was a little trick or treater.

I was trying to think of what my best costume was back in the day, and all I could come up with was "bee." Most of my other costumes were hand me downs from my sister, but one day I looked in one of those "make it yourself costume catalogues" they had at the craftstores, and I saw the bee, and I was like, "Mom, I gotta be a bee!" so my mom got the patterns, bought a yellow sweatshirt and sewed black stripes on it, pinned a stinger to me, and made an antenna-headband thing. So that was my only non hand me down costume I can think of aside from....

The worst costume. Which was "punk rocker." I can't exactly remember what I wanted to be that year, only that it fell through at the last minute for some reason or another. So my mom came up with punk rocker. Which, obviously neither she nor I had any idea about punk music or the punk movement in general. I could not tell the Sex Pistols from the Spice Girls back then. So I had a black sweatshirt she'd let me go crazy on with t-shirt paint, and some wash out hair dye, and at every single house they asked me what I was, and I'd say "I'm a punk rocker, dude!" in a surfer voice and hold out the "hang ten" sign. True story.