Rant #2,456: The Monster Mash

Boo!

Happy Halloween to everyone!

To me, this is just another frightful day on my calendar, marking three weeks since I lost my job.

But at least I will be home this year to see who actually comes to the door to do trick or treat.

We have the candy, we are more than willing to give it out to the kids, but few come around, and this year, with the weather predicted to be frightful in itself, let's see just how many kids come around.

I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't open up the door this year/

Anyway, thinking back to past Halloweens, well, the holiday just isn't the same anymore. I think the adults have co-opted the kids holiday as their own, what with all the adult Halloween-themed parties and costumes and such.

In addition, Halloween is not as fun any more because of the times we live in ... there are just too many things going on to allow your kids to go from house to house trick or treating. It simply might not be safe, and why take a chance?

I have spoken in past years about how the Halloweens I experienced as a kid were just so much more fun than what goes on today, and I could pontificate about that again this year.

Search back into the more than 2,400 posts here, and you will easily find where I described the fun I had as a kid on Halloween, living in a development in Queens, New York, with 20 buildings and thousands of apartments to ring the doorbells of.

I have also spoken in the past about taking my own kids trick or treating--my daughter as a child of divorce and my son who didn't have any friends to go with door to door. I didn't mind doing it, but it was sad that my kids could not experience Halloween as I did.

But this year I am going in a different direction for my Halloween Rant, because I am going to describe one of my fondest--and funniest--memories of the holiday as an adult.

Suffice it to say that I was not laughing then, but I can have a good laugh about it now.

It must have been around the year 2000 or so. I was at work, yes, the work that I just got laid off from.

We were a bustling company then, a small company of nearly 40 employees, and there was always something new to do or new to learn at my job, which at this point, I had had for about four years or so.

We had a lot of different personalities at this place of work, a lot of people who worked hard and enjoyed what they were doing.

And then we had Lucy.

Lucy was one of the most interesting characters I have ever worked with.

She came here from Central America I believe as a pre-teen or early teen, and had been in this country probably at least 10 years or so when I joined the company.

She was an administrative assistant, or a secretary, or whatever you wanted to call her, but Lucy had a different perspective on things than just about anybody I ever met.

Lucy was what she was. She was an extremely pretty girl, very short in stature but very big in ... well ... just let's say that she was not just big, but very big, and she was so big that whether you liked it or not, yes, that (those) was the first things that you saw when you met her.

The only way I can compare how she looked is that she was sort of a Hispanic Dolly Parton, much younger and prettier but that would be my recollection of her/

And she knew how she looked, was comfortable about how she looked, and she never dressed at work to accentuate that attribute, but she was just so huge that no matter what she wore, they kind of stood out.

She had told me during a conversation with her that before she came to America, her goal was not only to come here, but she used Playboy models as her guide about how American women were. Her brothers had gotten hold of the American version of the magazine, and she used to dream about coming here, using those models as a reference point.

Those who knew her better at my work said that even as a young girl, she was made fun of and taunted because of the way she looked, and as she got older, she simply went with the flow because that was how she was built, and there was little she could do about it.

Anyway, one day at work, that just happened to be Halloween, it was lunch time, and most people in the company had gone out for the hour we had to eat. I was alone on the top floor of the building that we used and where my desk was. I had to take a phone call, speaking to a spokesman from the Defense Commissary Agency, the organization that oversaw all the military commissaries (supermarkets), which was about one thing or another.

The woman I spoke to on the phone was all business, a person that was, at that point, an icon among spokespeople in this line of the business, a person who was both looked up to and feared at the same time. She took me into her confidence because I proved to her that I knew what I was doing, and she called me then to talk about one thing or another.

I had my pad out, writing down what she was saying, and then, in the corner of my eye, I see Lucy coming up the stairs and approaching my office. She was wearing a nondescript plaid shirt, which once again, didn't show anything, but because of the way she was built, couldn't help but show enough.

I am on the phone with the spokesperson, and Lucy approaches me, and I kind of wave her off, as I thought she did not see that I was on the phone. As she approached, I could see that she had other intentions.

As I am taking notes on the phone, she starts to unbutton her shirt! I am still waving her off, but as I am listening to the business matters being told to me by the spokesperson, she is taking off her plaid shirt, one button at a time.

As I am still waving her off, she comes to the last button, rips the shirt off her body, and I swear that at first I thought she was topless ... but lo and behold, she was wearing a fake female body chest underneath her shirt! It literally took me a couple of seconds to see this, but within the milliseconds of those seconds, I thought she was topless!

I tried to keep my composure on the phone as she saw that I finally got it and walked away. Somehow I got off the phone in one piece, and I later called her and said what she did was funny, "but not while I am on the phone."

Lucy obviously had a great sense of humor, but at this point in her life, at least from what I saw from her, she was like a little kid in a Dolly Parton costume, but that would soon change.

Over the next year or two she had a relationship with someone, became pregnant, and had a child that she named Robert, another nod to her need to be an All-American.

One day, she came into my office, and literally was hysterically crying, and this was no joke this time around.

She told me that the guy who was the father of their child had refused to give her any money for the then newborn baby, and based on the fact she knew about my history with Family Court as a divorced dad with a kid--I had since remarried back then, had my son, but was still going back and forth to Family Court on a regular basis related to my daughter's well-being--she wanted some advice about what to do.

I told her to go to Family Court immediately--the court was a few blocks up from our place of business--and tell them about the situation as she had just told me. She did just as I advised her to do, and yes, the father of her child did have to pay some money to her. She later thanked me for helping her out.

Lucy stayed with our company for probably another year or so, and then very abruptly, she was gone. I never found out if she had left on her own or she was fired. With her, it really could have gone either way.

I later found out that she had met and married a member of the Marine Corps, and they had moved out of the area, presumably moving down south somewhere, but that is the last I heard about her, and no one else at my company--even her close friends there--knew anything beyond that.

So that is my Halloween story of the day. When I think about it, I can laugh, laugh, laugh, and laugh some more, but at the time, I must have been turning every color inn the spectrum while she was doing her pseudo-striptease.

Have a great Halloween, and I will speak to you again tomorrow.

Boo!