Want to be scared? You might have been celebrating in South Korea and gotten crushed in the crowd with over 150 other young adults. For most it seems they were finally out and about after a long period of covid quarantining and distancing. But hey, the "treat" after that trick is the government will pay for the funerals and medical bills.
You might have been celebrating a newly repaired footbridge across a river in India which didn't exactly get repaired correctly, broke, and killed over 130 people. The "treat" after that trick is expected to be prosecutions. Can't wait.
You might have been the 80-year-old husband of a widely and unjustly vilified politician, 3rd in the line of succession to the Presidency, who was attacked with a hammer and with repeated questions from a not totally unexpected wingnut looking for his wife instead. For a "treat", he's recovering in the hospital after surgery for a depressed skull fracture while the wingnut is behind bars, likely for the rest of his life. Of course, if you don't look at the particulars too closely, "recovering" sounds just peachy, but how well do 80-year-olds actually heal from that kind of trauma?
If you are reading this, you weren't any of those people. You might instead have held a party, or be handing out candy, or escorting your young children around the neighborhood in a choice of numerous costumes that are nowhere near that scary anyway.
My Halloween hasn't been near that interesting, thank goodness. All that candy gets expensive, so it's nice to live in a seniors community where no trick-or-treaters show up. It's also nice not to walk the neighborhood with rowdy kids on their annual humongous sugar high, watching to keep them out of traffic, soothe tears after somebody doesn't share properly, or wears a too scary costume and delights in bullying littler ones while wearing it.
But there was a party. Costumes were optional, and everybody took the option not to wear one. Go figure. It was at the club, and included choices of slices from 4 different pizzas, of which one was both gluten free and vegan. Yes, we have those members in the club. They were delighted to have an option they could actually eat. I, of course, got to research pizza stores, make the order, go pick it up and bring it to the club just at noon. I do get reimbursed.
The party had an extra reason for bringing us together. We were honoring our volunteers, especially those who contributed their time and efforts above and beyond the minimum club requirements. I got to poll the rest of the board and together we all added names to the list of those we'd noticed. As each name was called, each got unanimous applause.
Of course, that party was just a couple hours in my day. It turned out to be extraordinarily busy. I had to complete the paper work on ten items to submit for sale in the store which meant four hours of early work, put one volunteer who'd just come south to do some much needed and long delayed computer work so a late report could finally be turned in to the management company for all the rec centers. Once two conflicting reports were printed out, I got to take them home, compare them, and turn the correct one (except for three notes) in to a building across town. That errand wound up as also a shopping trip for Steve's needs, and a different one for mine.
As I was checking out on my last one, I asked the cashier how she liked my costume today? I announced I came dressed as a tired old senior citizen. She smiled. We both agreed that the costume was such a good one that it couldn't be distinguished from the real thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment