My Best Friend and Me

I have so many fun memories of Halloween.  When I was a kid (in the dark ages) our parents just let us go out on our own.  It was a time of innocence. 

Parents didn't worry about perverts, drive bys, or kidnappings.  They were unheard of.  Neighbors watched out for each other.

This was my favorite night because I could go out with my friends and I didn't even have to have my older brother along to spoil the fun.  I was free!!

My best little friend and I would plan, giggle, prepare, giggle, and finally come up with our costume to be presented runway style for our moms.  Then we'd giggle some more.

One particular Halloween, we decided we were going to be a two headed monster.  We were both built like little stick figures, so we got a pair of pants and a shirt from a man that was quite hefty.  I got in one leg, she in the other and zip.  I put one arm in the shirt sleeve, she put one arm in the other and buttoned up. 

The only difficulty was that this was back when men's pant legs were pegged, which means they were very small at the bottom.  So we had two feet popped out of each pant leg that was basically a tourniquet around our ankles.  Not only did we have to get the geisha girl walk down, but we had to coordinate our tiny steps while hugging each other with one arm.  Besides wobbling down the road with our heads banging together, we did pretty good.  Shuffle....shuffle....giggle....bang. 

After staggering and giggling our way through the little community, we started down the scary part of road between her house and mine.  There were some rock cliffs along one side and it had tiny little holes or caves in the cliffs.  Her dad always enjoyed telling us that Indians were buried in those holes and that sometimes at night they would come out.

Well, for two little girls, this was cause for imagination, fear, and of course, giggles.  As we were beginning that spooky stretch of road, we heard someone behind us.  After cracking our heads together several times we were to get a glimpse of a boy behind us.  Not just any boy, but the boy that greased his hair back, wore a white t-shirt with a pack of Marlboro's rolled up in one sleeve, and a black leather jacket on over that.  Yep, he must be dangerous.  We had our own community Fonz. 


Once we were able to keep our heads from knocking together and get turned back around, we got our shuffle into double time.  We may have made sparks, I don't know, but for some reason fear with little girls brings on fits of whisper giggling.  We were whisper giggling uncontrollably and setting off sparks as we shuffled on down the road.

As he got closer and closer I'm not sure our feet were even touching the ground at this point, but he came right up behind us AND..........just walked around us. 

Well, that was pretty anticlimactic.  So, we just shuffled our way around the rest of the neighborhood, got our pillowcases full of candy, went to her house, ate our candy and spent the rest of the evening giggling and enjoying our sugar high.