For the first time in years I decorated my living room for Halloween. It wasn’t anything spectacular — just one Jack O’ Lantern.
And I am not even the one who made it. My girlfriend did. But it has been sitting on a table in my living room for about a month now. It has sat with me through a few close Steeler games, many frozen mini pizzas, late night movies, and hours of ESPN. And I have to say, I have grown attached to it’s marker-sketched face. A marker was used to draw two triangle eyes and a spiky mouth because the shell was too hard for a knife to penetrate. This fact is proven by several scars on the pumpkin’s surface.
Avoiding being sliced open and gutted, I believe, is the main reason my old friend is not deteriorating. The pumpkin is not soft and it doesn’t stink. Halloween is over, but it seems wrong to just throw it out. Soon a fake Christmas tree will likely sit on the table. The apartment’s lone decoration for the holiday season. I think this year I will leave the Jack O’ Lantern there too. Unseasonable? Sure. But it’s good to see an old friend beat the odds.
-Rick Kazmer
rickk@dailyamerican.com