The Halloween Suburban Myth

I am exhausted. I am covered in goop, my back aches, my hair is a matted mess, my hands are cramped to uselessness and I look like hell.

No, I am not the mother of a newborn. I just got finished carving our Halloween pumpkin.

Two hours into my intricately detailed haunted house carving I came to my senses – the pain in my left hand is what did it – and wondered what the hell I was thinking. But by then it was too late. I couldn’t put half a haunted house out for the kiddies to enjoy; I would get hate mail for the rest of the year. So I plundered on, and in the meantime simultaneously and unwittingly completed my “disheveled housewife” costume.

Turns out it was nearly all in vain because we had only four trick-or-treaters. Back in New York you didn’t get many kids, because the front doors to all the apartment buildings are locked and impenetrable (one hopes). So in an effort to keep out the riff-raff, we also alienated ourselves from a truly enjoyable tradition. Instead of trick-or-treating, Halloween lovers got half naked, sprayed themselves with glitter, threw on an elaborate showgirls-like sequined and feathered headpiece, and paraded through Chelsea in 30 degree weather. And those were just the men. I found this terribly amusing and most certainly entertaining, but it just wasn’t the same as my childhood Halloweens. Now that I am back in suburbia I was truly looking forward to a real Halloween. I envisioned myself the Cool Lady on the block, the one who gives out handfuls of “fun size” candy bars, rather than this new, micro-sized candy “bite” they’ve come up with recently.

(A quick aside, a soliloquy, if you will, on this new Micro size – which, if the old Halloween candy bar was called “fun” size, must be the “Delirious With Ecstasy” size. The Micro Size is simply un-American. Americans enjoy Super Size everything. It doesn’t matter if we can consume the serving within our lifetimes or not – we want it BIG. We want everything BIG and for the most part the entire consumer economy supports us in this, as evidenced by French fry portions that can no longer fit through those little windows at the drive-thru. SO WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH THE CANDY PEOPLE? Why is chocolate the only thing getting smaller? I have to stop now, or I’ll be too emotional to continue this column.)

Anyway, in my fantasy, the kids would pass each other on the street and throw meaningful advice at one another, as we used to do when we were kids, along the lines of, “Don’t go to that house – they’re giving out toothpaste,” or “That lady is giving out REAL size Hershey’s!” And in these conversations my house would feature prominently, reverently, as they whispered to each other, “She gives out whole handfuls of the really good stuff and there weren’t ANY dum-dums in her bowl at all!” And then all the children in the neighborhood, after they had completed their rounds, would vote me Best Lady on the Block and carry me down the street on their shoulders and vow never to egg my house again.

Well, okay, perhaps that was a tad unrealistic but the point is I was very much looking forward to being generous on Halloween. But we only got four kids. Four. Kids. I can only assume that the trend that had begun when I left suburbia seven years ago has increased in momentum to the point that by next year, trick-or-treating will just be a suburban myth.

When I have children, I will gather them ‘round on Halloween night and tell them fantastic tales of when I was a child, and my parents would dress me up, and take me door to door around the neighborhood, and perfect strangers would each give me a piece of candy, and at the end of the night I would have a pillowcase full of candy that was all mine! And they will roll their eyes at me, and think, “Mom’s been into the wine again,” and ask if they can go IM on their blackberries now.

I understand that we must protect our children, but it really pisses me off that a few crazies out there have ruined this tradition for everyone. It is truly a shame that one day soon children will no longer know the joy of roaming the streets after dark, dressed as their favorite hero or as something to make the girls scream, committing silly little acts of vandalism all in good fun, and eating so much chocolate they puke in your flower bed.

Those were the days.

I'm Not Crazy, I'm Multi-tasking

There are those who believe that women are scatter-brained flibberty-gibbets incapable of focusing on any one task from start to finish. There are others, such as myself, who would like to point out that the ability to do more than one task simultaneously is called, in the workplace, “multi-tasking” and is considered to be a highly desirable asset. But unfortunately those who do not share this talent have a difficult time understanding its benefits.

I can cook dinner, talk on the phone, do the laundry and empty the dishwasher all at the same time. And very rarely will I accidentally dump the salad into the dryer instead of the salad bowl. True, there are these occasional slip-ups when we multi-task, but for every mistake I make, I have accomplished ten other tasks successfully.

Many years ago, when we dwelled in caves and did not shave our armpits, men were expected to do only one thing: kill elk (or buffalo, or mammoths, depending on the century and continent). Meanwhile, the women squatted in the cave and kept the newly-discovered campfires burning, picked berries, made clothes, bore and raised children, healed the sick, and, if they had time, ran out during lunch to the hairdresser’s to get that expertly matted, just-got-hit-by-lightning look that was so popular back then. Our genetics have changed little since those times (although luckily hairstyles have improved dramatically).

My responsibilities around the house are to: clean the house, do the laundry, cook, wash the dishes, pay the bills, walk the dog, check the mail, make the coffee, and shop for food. My boyfriend’s tasks are to: take out the garbage, if he remembers, which is about 30% of the time. I do honestly believe he means to be more helpful, but men have this uncanny ability to tune out chores that need doing. A man and woman can be standing together staring at the exact same kitchen and where she sees coffee grounds, cracker crumbs, soap scum, fingerprints, and rotten food, he sees, well, a kitchen. And so, when she begins her ritualistic high-pitched wail consisting of variations on the general idea that their house is so dirty pigs would be offended by it, he will respond with a resigned look that says, “Great. There goes poker night.” He will then proceed to help her clean in an overly-solicitous manner that states he is humoring her because she is clearly unstable – not because he agrees the place needs to be cleaned.

And he really doesn’t think it does. We must remember that this is the same guy who, when you first met him, did not clean the dishes in his apartment until there was nothing left to eat out of, including the bathtub. Same person also considered underwear clean if you turned it inside out, and saw no reason to wash the sheets ever, since you always bathed yourself immediately after sleeping on them anyway. There was stuff growing in his sink evolved enough to go two rounds on Jeopardy.

To their credit, due to an uncanny ability to block out everything around them including babies crying and the neighbor’s house on fire, men can concentrate so intently on whatever single task is at hand that they do a much better job on it than a woman would. Granted, it takes them seven times longer, but when it’s done, it is really done. I may be able to clean the whole house in two hours while my boyfriend has only gotten halfway through cleaning the guest bathroom’s toilet, but when he is finished with that toilet, by God, you could eat off it, if that’s your kind of thing.

The downside of this intense focus is when it misses the target. For example, you may say, “Honey, while I am chopping the broccoli, cooking the chicken, heating the bread and fixing tomorrow’s breakfast could you please stir the rice?” He will then get up from the couch with every intention of doing the chore you have asked him to do. However, in between the couch and the kitchen and directly in his path is the television, on which there is a shiny black helicopter dodging machine-gun fire in a most seductive manner. An hour later when you glance up, sweaty and breathless from your ten simultaneous chores, he will still be standing there, staring wide-eyed at the television like one of those zombies from Night of the Living Dead. “Honey?” you’ll say, your voice catching on a sob, “the rice?” (which, of course, burned a long time ago). And he’ll visibly shake himself, remove his gaze from the source of his intense concentration and look at you as if he has no idea how you got into his house.

I suppose men have just as much room to gripe about this genetic dichotomy as we do, and hopefully when the frustration reaches its apex we can all take a moment to reflect on how well we balance each other out. But not if the #$%&* trash hasn’t been taken out in two weeks because frankly with that smell I can’t concentrate on anything.