High Plains Panhandler

Colleen turns 12

Last week Colleen turned 12 with a subdued birthday party of lasagna, ice cream cake, and loot.

Colleen only wanted one present for her birthday, one small trifle, one small handset requiring a monthly service fee. She wanted a mobile phone. And we, the softies, got her one.

But at least we had to be tricky. So instead of simply handing her a wrapped box, cell phone sized, we dug out a gift box from the closet and in tossed an old nasty pink cira 1980 phone that I had gotten in college for 50 cents at some garage sale. When Colleen pulled it out, her face fell, and my explanation was: "Well, cell phones are expensive, so we'll just plug this pink phone into your wall and give you a long cord. It'll be almost the same as a cell phone."

And Colleen, dear Colleen, nodded slowly, smiled slightly and said it was okay and that she understood. The look on her face told me she was disappointed, but she wasn't going to show us her disappointment. She was going to make this terrible old phone work, and everything would be okay.

All the while this was going on, I was doing a little brute force slight of hand and getting the real present into the now empty gift bag. Once I had it in there, I was able to announce, "Why, what's this? You missed something!"

She tore off the paper instantly, and all three kids started screaming and jumping up and down about Colleen's new phone. And then Colleen quickly scurried off to a quiet corner and began figuring out ringtones, wallpaper, and speed dialing.

Happy birthday, Colleen!

Hiking Day

It's 80 degrees on November 4th. So what do you do? You go hiking.

Halloween 2007

Just when we thought it'd be a sweaty and sultry Halloween, a tiny cold front blew in that tipped us gently over into Fall, which was quite nice because Alex wanted to wear a Stitch costume (from the movie Lilo and Stitch), and it was loaded with all sorts of warm padding, a zipper head, and an extra pair of toasty arms.

This year our Halloween expedition to the neighborhood consisted of me, Suzanne, and Alex. Megan, dressed as a Sonic Drive-In worker (complete with apron, hat, shirt, and tray for her goodies), decided to attend the big fourth grade Halloween party down the street. The highlight of these parties is the traditional mass exodus of all the kids, a massive crowd of zombies, pirates, ghosts, lawyers (yes, frightening lawyers!), and strange M&M characters that descends on the neighborhood like a swarm of locusts over a field of candy corn.

Colleen (dressed, in her words, as a '50s person, which I had hoped meant someone from the 1950s and not someone in her 50s) planned on hitting the streets with a few of her friends, our rule here being she had to be in a group of four or more or she'd have to be stuck with an adult. She disappeared with a group of other sixth-graders right at 6:30 (still sunny because of the late time change this year).

And so, a little later, we headed out with just Alex. I thought it would be clever to wear my scary skeleton mask again this year, but since I had to be "adult" and "prepared," my scariness was undercut by all the stuff jutting out of my jacket pockets, including two flashlights, a couple pair of gloves, a hat, my glasses case, and all sorts of other bulky things I had believed might come in handy (but secretly knew never would).

So I looked like a quasi-scary skeleton head person who had just robbed the Dollar Store. The skeleton mask itself, my standard fare for years now, had slight slits for peering through, but as the years go on the slits get narrower. Now it's like like trying to divine the whole world by looking through an underline on a sheet of paper. Needless to say, I ran smack into Suzanne about 25 times, lunged off all sorts of curbs, tripped over quite a few sprinkler heads, and ran shoulder first into two yield signs, one stop sign, and a small oak that I think I damaged significantly.

I was scary the same way Don Knots is scary. That is to say, not much at all.

We ran around the neighborhood for a couple of hours, and Alex raked in the loot. Once we were home, he poured it all out on the table and didn't want to put it away until Colleen and Megan got home, saw his mountain of sugar, and stewed in their own jealousy.

He laughed when they saw his candy. He laughed and laughed. And then Alex rubbed his hands together, bloodshot eyes wide as he surveyed his bounty. And he uttered one word, under his breath, barely audible:

"Joy!"