High Plains Panhandler

Colleen's 10th Birthday

Earlier this month Colleen had her 10th birthday party. This means she is in the double-digits and now has new and critically important reasons to ignore her parents.

For the party she invited four friends for a camp-out in the backyard. November in the Texas Panhandle is a tricky time to schedule anything outside because you never know how the weather will turn. When Colleen turned one, we had a party in the backyard under a beautiful 75 degree blue sky, and just last week the temperature hit 85 (today, alas, it's a wee different, and we're all bundled up in sweats and blankets because we fear our gas heating bill).

On Colleen's party day, though, it was nice and balmy, and it seemed good enough to pop open a tent for an outside sleep over. Actually, let me correct that. The tent we borrowed wasn't exactly the "pop up" kind, and an hour after I had put out all the pieces on the lawn and started my MacGyver-like construction, consisting of brute force, prayer, and candy bar wrappers, I noticed Colleen standing over me, hands on her hips.

"Have you EVER put up a tent before, Daddy?"

"Hey! I've put up plenty of tents. Just not any of this magnitude."

This was half-true. Not including the Disney Princess tent we put up in the family room one year, I have successfully put up two and a quarter other tents (the quarter was when my friend Rodney and I went camping near the Frio River and I had to sleep under one of those foil emergency blankets, but that's another story). It was true that I had not put up a multi-room tent before, and that was giving me some consternation.

I eventually finished, thanks to the crumpled instructions I finally found in the bottom of the tent bag, and immediately Alex and Megan jumped inside and began practicing a puppet show for a performance later that afternoon.

Colleen, Alex, and I had worked out a secret plan to scare Colleen's friends once they were all gathered in the tent, so after they arrived, Colleen ushered them into the backyard to tell them a early-evening ghost story. My cue was the word 'murder.' When Colleen said that, Alex and I were supposed to scream and yell from outside the tent. So we waited in the shadows, listening for the cue, when Megan trotted up to us, her camping lantern all aglow:

Megan: "What's going on, guys?"

Me: "Megan, shut off the lantern!"

Colleen: "Then there was a MURDER . . ."

Megan: "But I can't see without it!"

Me: "Give me that thing."

Colleen: "Because the MURDER happened on the MURDER street before the other MURDER happened . . ."

Alex: "Can I be scaring them now, Daddy?"

That's when I realized we had missed the cue, so all three of us just starting screaming and yelling and shaking the tent, in and out, up and down, back and forth, and the girls inside shrieked and shrieked. It was obvious they weren't too frightened, no doubt because it was only seven o'clock, but they were good sports about it.

Later that night we had a better chance for scariness. After dinner, crafts, a movie, snacks, it was 11:30 and time for everyone to pretend to go to bed. Colleen and her friends ran out to the tent and bundled up (the temperature had been dropping steadily since sundown, and now it hovered around 39 degrees). I went outside to see if the coals in the grill had died down (we had grilled hot dogs for dinner and left the coals going for s'mores - roasting them over the grill sure beat setting up a campfire by the sandbox, although finding charcoal in November is harder than you'd think) and there, in front of me, was the fireplace poker that I had used to jab the coals. I looked at the tent that was sitting all alone in the corner of the backyard, next to the wooden fence on the side of the yard and brick fence along the back, and I knew I simply couldn't resist. So I took the poker and crept along the fence in the shadows until I was directly behind the tent. I could hear the girls talking non-stop inside, so I knew they hadn't discovered me yet. Then I started dragging the tip of the metal poker across the brick fence. It made the perfect axe sharpening noise. I couldn't have downloaded anything better from the computer internets.

What I didn't expect was how loud five 10-year-old girls could scream. I don't mean loud. I mean magnificently, outrageously, stupendously, ear-splittingly loud. Corpse-waking loud. Pirate-repelling loud.

Colleen gave me the business afterward - days afterward - demanding to know why I scared them like that, but I thought that was supposed to be part of my job (this has now been clarified for me). The rest of the party went very well, and even though the girls woke up all bundled together in a 31 degree tent, they didn't complain.

A couple of days later Suzanne and I took Colleen out to dinner, just the three of us, to celebrate her turning 10. It was a very grown-up time for a grown-up girl, and we all enjoyed it. Yet, it was a little sad. Colleen's now a little older, wiser, and ready for shopping. Her time for hide-and-seek around the house, Candyland, and sentences without sarcasm are slowly fading away, crammed on the bookshelf with her baby pictures and videos. And if this is what comes with turning 10 I dread what comes with 16.

I bet, though, when that birthday comes around, I'll still be able to scare her.

The Rotten Banana

There's something . . . indescribable about a four-year-old who drapes his sister's cello case over his head and runs around the house singing, "I'm a rotten banana! I'm a rotten banana!"

Never-ending Halloween

It's taken me until now to finally recuperate from our Big Deal Halloween weekend. Usually we get prepped for the big event with a couple of bowls full of Frito Pie, and then we storm through the neighborhood, getting the goods wherever we can. This time, though, it was a little different.

Suzanne, with a couple of her brothers and sister-in-law, scrounged up the $450,000 to buy a few tickets to the U2 concert in Houston. U2 is an important band. I know this because they have their own iPod. I also know that their lead singer is Bono, but I am not allowed to pronounce it "Bone-Oh" as in Sonny Bono. I am not allowed to even joke about this. It is serious business at our house.

So Suzanne flew to Houston Friday afternoon before the concert began, and I was on duty through the weekend. This, normally is a great thing, but this was the weekend before Halloween, which meant kids' parties - plenty of kids parties. Friday night was out first party that took place in a gym about a quarter of a mile from the Cowboy Church. When I was getting directions to this party, and I heard that it was close to the Cowboy Church, I merely thought that was a figure of speech, similar to "the shiny bank building" or "the haunted car wash." But sure enough, it was a real church that had, in volkswagen-sized letters, on its front: "Cowboy Church." I have since learned that this church has split into two churches due to this theological struggle: can cowboy hats be worn during church service? This is true.

The party was fun (it was thrown by Colleen's friend), although as soon as we walked in the mother asked if I could do a magic show. I didn't have any of my stuff with me, so all I could do was make extra-large Fritos disappear. That didn't impress too many people. The mother said she'd be happy to go to our house and pick up all my magic stuff, but I told her it was protected by a moat with alligators, an electrified chain link fence, two lions, six parrots, and a riddle-spouting Sphinx. She opted not to fetch my tricks for me. Sadly, within an hour Alex tugged at my shirt. He wasn't feeling well and only wanted water. My finely honed parental instincts immediately told me something was wrong. This massive cornucopia of Halloween candy, cupcakes, pizza, and cookies and all he wanted was a paper cup of water. So, before the regurgitation could begin we clambered back into the van and headed home (actually, that's not quite true; another one of Colleen's friends had called earlier and asked her to spend the night - I happily accepted the invitation, knowing that I was selfishly better off keeping an eye on two sugar-upped kids than three).

The next morning we had an earlier visitor. At 8:30 some friends of ours dropped off Spencer, their four-year-old, for a few hours while they ran around doing important, childless things. Spencer, Alex, and Megan kept to themselves (for the most part) in the backyard while I spent the morning raking leaves in the front yard. It might come as a surprise to those of you who are familiar with our Texas Panhandle sparse tree population that we get the occasional dump of seasonal leaves, but believe my calluses when I tell you we do. At about 11:30, give or take, I had a nice five foot mound of leafy goodness, reading for jumps, dives, and body mashing. And the kids took me up on it. So after half an hour of goofing around in the pile of leaves, Megan decided to expand the universe of leaf possibilities with a new and frantic game of Throw Handfuls of Leaves with Bad Aim. This, unfortunately, resulted in the quick extermination of my entire morning's work as Megan, Alex, and Spencer distributed the pile of leaves back across the lawn, ending with an uncanny impression of how the lawn looked before I had even raked the first few inches earlier that morning. I would have wept, but I had no energy to squeeze out a tear, and so we shuffled in the house. I followed last, hoping beyond hope that magical lunch fairies would have already prepared food for the kids so I could put my feet up and reflect upon my recent display of the Protestant work ethic.

There were, I am sad to report, no lunch fairies that day, and the job of peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich makings fell upon my cramped and withered fingers.

That afternoon, I dropped Megan off at a friend's house for another party. When we got to the house, the mother met us outside and we had this conversation:

Mother: I'll be happy to drop Megan off at home after the party.

Me: That's okay. Suzanne's in Houston at the U2 concert so I'm juggling all the kids and their parties. I'll just pick Megan up because I have to drop Colleen off at another party on my way here anyway.

Mother: At U2! Wow. I am jealous.

Me: I'm sleepy.

Mother: Well, I'll just drop Megan off then.

Me: No, that's okay. No one will be home.

Mother: Where will Suzanne be?

That's when I realized that many party-throwing parents must self-medicate before the party begins.

At the same time Megan's friend's party was ending, another friend of Colleen's has a party that was beginning. So I picked up one kid, dropped off the other, and then Megan, Alex, and I headed over to Wildcat Bluff Nature Center for Howl-O-Ween, which is a candy-fest that the nature center puts on every year. There were crafts and animals and a little candy grabbing on a small nature trail. Volunteers, dressed at animals you see in the wild around here, were scattered around the path and handing out candy to the kids. Howl-O-Ween was great this year, but the wind was bitterly cold, and I think some of the volunteers were wishing they could have dressed as bears or sasquatches. The horned lizard woman looked particularly chilly.

It was late when we picked up Colleen and then everyone, bellies aching, crawled into bed and instantly fell asleep. Suzanne flew in the next day to a house of cranky kids, which was an unpleasant surprise. Violin, cello, and viola practice went particularly poorly, although I had expected vibrato would be easy to do because of the kids' steady diet of sugar.

All was quiet until Monday, Halloween. True to tradition, we had our frito pie and marched out of the house, ready to attack the neighborhood. No one stayed back to hand out candy this year, mainly because our end of the street is full of dark houses and cranky candy givers, so we put a bucket of candy in front of the door, and Colleen put this sign on it: "Take two pieces, if you dare!" The bucket also had a rubber hand sticking straight out of it (the candy was piled all around the hand). If you took a piece of candy, the rubber hand would come down on your own. It's funny, but when you don't expect it, say when you're picking up the bowl to take it in for the night, you run the risk of screaming like a howler monkey.

As we walked around, we met up with some friends whose kids were dressed as a Sonic carhop (very clever - she carried a tray with a drink, straw, and bag, and people would drop candy into the bag) and a ninja (I kept calling him barking ninja.com). Colleen was dressed as a candy corn, Alex a cheetah, and Megan a devil (Megan wore her red soccer sweatshirt under her devil cloak, and when I said she was a soccer devil she laughed and said, "If you kick my soccer ball, you'll die! Hahahahaha!").

After we collected close to six hundred pounds of candy each, we hopped into the car and drove to the Discovery Center (the science museum here) for a quick jaunt at their Monster Museum. We weren't able to stay long because the kids were getting very tired and itching to get home and eat some candy.

Of course, everything ended with Colleen busting me for breaking into one of the candy bags the next night. We had gotten all the kids to bed, and I remember seeing a piece of caramel in Megan's bag, so I tiptoed into the kitchen, took down all the bags from the shelf, and starting poking through them. A few seconds later Colleen magically appeared next to me, scaring me with the question: "Daddy, what are you doing!"

So I came clean, apologized, and never got my caramel. The next morning Colleen diligently counted her candy (although later she said she was just pretending), so after she had started the walk to school I threw in three extra Tootsie Roll Pops, just to bemuse her.

Now we have candy, all sorts of candy, and none of it very good. Here I sit, plotting my strategy for next year and thinking of where I can hide my own special bag of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups and, if I'm lucky, a caramel or two. Maybe one will be shaped like Sonny Bono.