IT'S THE GREAT HANBOK SPIRIT, CHARLIE BROWN.
Good grief. Another Halloween.
I decided to dress up as a doctor on his week off who just didn't feel like doing the whole [insert any annual event here].
Amy was put in charge of picking out our nieces' costumes for this Halloween. She came up with "hippie chick" and, ugh, "doctor."
ME: "Doctor? Are you kidding me?"
AMY: "What's wrong with it?"
ME: "It's just The Most Unoriginal Costume Idea Ever. You'd be better off putting a sheet over her head as a ghost. At least that's so lame that it's funny. Hahaha!"
AMY: "But get this -- I'm also going to put blood on her scrubs and make a name tag that says DR.CRAZY. Hahha! Isn't that funny?"
ME (shakes head): *sigh*
Amy took all the kids out for Halloween. It was actually the first Halloween for all of them, strangely enough. Amy and the kids were gone for about fifteen minutes when she came back inside.
"Did you forget something?" I asked.
"No. We're done," Amy answered.
"What do you mean you're done? You just left."
"It's too cold for the kids. Brrrrr!" she replied. And that was that. The shortest Halloween ever, Charlie Brown.
(By the way, that's a fake finger around Dr.Crazy's neck. Not whatever else you were thinking.)
Back in my day, we would be out all night, cold, shivering, wet, whatever, until our over-filled pillow cases had to be dragged like body bags from a Sopranos gang hit. We'd wear plastic masks that made your face sweaty with your own breath and tiny eye holes that tested your extrasensory area perception as much as your night vision.
We were one in any army of short and semi-short masked sugar-junkie goblins and orcs. Sometimes you'd get full size candy bars. Sometimes you'd get some do-gooder handing out apples (go back to your fascist child-hating planet you cheapass) or old folks and their rolled-up pennies. And don't even get me started about that hard candy crapola. On the way home we'd hit the good houses again in hopes of getting handfuls of last call leftovers.
Then the news stories about tainted candy and razor-blades came out. Plastic costumes and masks became safety hazards. Every other homeowner was either a potential child molester or crazed candy poisoner, according to news threats and parental paranoia. Curfews went into effect. Halloween nights ended sooner. The crowds of children got smaller.
Now the past few Halloweens have seemed anemic compared to when I was a kid. Is it like this everywhere or is it just because the neighborhoods I live in now are two or three tax brackets higher than where I grew up then.
Last night, we had maybe four or five groups of kids come by our house. One of them, according to Amy, was a Corean boy and girl. The girl was dressed in a Corean hanbok and had fake blood around her mouth.
"That's an awesome idea. Why didn't you tell me sooner? I wish I saw that," I said in frustration to Amy after she told me too late. I would have dearly wanted a picture of her, but a grown man chasing a 13-year old girl in the dark with a camera is never a good idea.
Strangely, it bothered me that I didn't think of that costume idea myself. Like some hand-holding apparition of Corean spirit past, it seemed to point out to me what I've realized these past months. How dull my imagination and inspiration and interest in things in general have gotten over the past year. How little I've done, outside of work that is, these days. It's odd because I've got a nicer house, a much better job, and Sun Su and Ooseung become more adoreable every day. But lately it's like I am under water. When I'm home, every thought and emotion and desire is duller and it requires more energy just to move.
I know that things are even harder for Amy with the kids and concomitant sleep deprivation and all but ....
I don't know. Just some things to work through. I wasn't really planning on going here with this entry.
Sometimes those ghosts just take you places you don't want to go, but you have to. Some spirits aren't meant to be seen; they're meant to re-awaken your own.
(Our sweet nieces and nephew.)
_____________________________________________
TINA ARMSTRONG APPROVES OF THIS MESSAGE
[Tina from Dead Or Alive Ultimate. My favorite character. She could be
part-Corean. You never know.]
Oh, and if you consider yourself an American, prove it.
VOTE.
(On a tangent, we seriously need to get more chicks in the White House someday, and I'm not talking about under the desk taking dictation.)
.