Memories of Autumn

I have varying memories of my Halloweens as a child. I grew up in a quiet suburban community outside of Providence, Rhode Island. Halloween as a kid was all about trick-or-treating, shaving cream fights, and coming up with great costumes.

When I was five years old, my mom took me to buy a pumpkin from a local farmer at his stand on Route 95. He had a few pumpkins out, and I picked one out that was the closest color match to a basketball uniform. It had a round, flat head and a bumpy back. The green skin was tough enough for a child’s first attempt at carving. I wasn’t quite sure what to do with this giant pumpkin, so I ended up leaving it outside in front of my house for my brother and I to play with. We would take turns whacking at the pumpkin with sticks we found lying around outside, until finally the whole thing was broken apart into pieces. My mother was not amused when she came home from work to find that my pumpkin had been smashed to pieces.

I still have a small, worn patch of that pumpkin carved into the front of my car. My mother made us draw on it with a permanent marker when I was seven. I remember we were outside on the car hood and I drew a face onto it, and my mom added some curls to the hair. It’s the last trace of that pumpkin that remains from my childhood.

The next year I tried to be a little more careful with my costume. I wanted to be a football player. It wasn’t hard to find a football jersey. I just had to wait for one of my friends to throw a football over the fence at my house, and I ran out and grabbed it before anyone could see me. That year I was the quarterback. I got all the attention I ever wanted, which was fine. I just needed to make sure that my friend wouldn’t tell anyone about my costume.

One of the best parts about my neighborhood in elementary school was that I knew everyone’s house. We had the same bus stops. There were a few kids who lived across the street who I didn’t like much, so I would walk around the block whenever they were coming or going. They were just kids, though, and it never got to be anything serious.

My friend Greg had the same idea as me to be a football player, and he wanted to be an offensive lineman. We both thought it was pretty cool to be offensive linemen. We weren’t good at football or anything, but we thought that being offensive linemen meant you got to push people around. We decided that we should be on the same team, since we were both offensive linemen.

The day of the big game we both put on our uniforms and went to the bus stop. When Greg saw me he said, “What are you doing here? This is my block.”

I was standing there with my helmet on backwards and my football pants over my regular pants. I was wearing a huge foam football helmet. “What are you doing?” I asked him.

“This is my block,” Greg said again.

I told Greg that we should go over to the other side of the street to get on the bus together. He told me he would go over there after we got on the bus together, and I told him that I would stay here on his block and wait for him to come back. Then I gave him my best imitation of a badass look.