Fellow parents,
I am so angry and drunk right now that I am shaking. This evening, our young son spent several unsupervised hours trick-or-treating while my husband and I got plastered at the Schroeder’s adults-only Halloween party.
Upon arriving home, we found him bawling his eyes out over his disappointing candy haul. Apparently, while the other neighborhood children received chocolate bars, quarters, and popcorn balls, my son, for some reason, received rocks. As in multiple rocks, from multiple houses.
One rock? Okay, fine. But every house in the neighborhood? This was obviously a coordinated effort to humiliate our family.
To think, as we were sipping gin fizzes, bobbing for apples, and sipping mai tais, you were all conspiring to fill our son’s empty pillowcase with pebbles and igneous stones. Shame on you.
To top it all off, our five-year-old daughter missed out on tricks or treats altogether after being coerced by that boy with an unhealthy attachment to his blanket to spend the whole night in a pumpkin patch. Without a coat on, mind you!
While I am obviously disappointed, I am also baffled as to why a group of adults have decided to single out my son. Is it his alopecia? Revenge for the time he cost us the Little League championship after a line drive somehow knocked all his clothes off?
Or were you all picking on him for his ratty, hole-ridden ghost costume? It’s not his fault he doesn’t have the dexterity of the other eight-year-olds.
Perhaps we should have assisted him rather than letting the boy go nuts with my extra-sharp stationery scissors. But I was nursing a hangover.
Then, to top it off, some girls used the back of his head as a model for a jack-o-lantern. Is his noggin especially pumpkin-shaped? Sure, but did they have to draw on him with a permanent marker? Absolutely not.
Look, none of us are perfect parents. Many of us are simply far too busy earning a living or being trapped in loveless and unfulfilling 1950s marriages to spend any time with our children. Heck, I hardly speak to my kids outside of a few sporadic and incoherent honks. But I thought we adults had an understanding. The kids are granted free rein of the neighborhood, and we all pretend like we aren’t freaked out by the sentient birds and beagles that are capable of playing ice hockey.
But now? All bets are off. Perhaps I’ll no longer look the other way regarding the Van Pelt girl practicing psychiatry without a license (her advice has not been at all helpful with my severe melancholia, by the way). And whoever are the parents of the boy they call “Pigpen”? Expect a visit from CPS.
None of your kids better invite themselves over for our family’s traditional jelly bean and popcorn Thanksgiving feast this year.
— Mrs. Brown