Smell my feet

Dear masked children,

Boo! Sorry no candy for you but help yourselves to a can of chunky goodness from my wide selection of three-year-old, generic-brand, cream-of-[insert vegetable/tuber/fungi here] soups which I forgot to set out for the Cub Scouts food drive last week, the poor bastards. Sorry there is a one can limit boys and girls. Don't get greedy.

Yes, that gruesome holiday is almost upon us again. No not the one when we give thanks that all the continent's indigenous peoples had such finicky immune systems, fought like cavemen and would've made lousy realtors. I'm talking about Halloween, silly. I mean who doesn't like being scared shitless? Well you can leave the room then. Those remaining go ahead and strap on the adult undergarment of your choice or take that laptop into the can and read on...

I lived alone in a century-old farmhouse in rural Iowa for two years. It goes without saying, so I'll say it, that there were more than a few nights when I feared being murdered by blood-thirsty rural farmhouse invaders. It was irrational, I admit. But that's what's so troubling about cold-blooded, axe-wielding killers: They're likely not rational. This is probably a good thing in the end since a rational homicidal maniac, assuming he or she (Oh who're we kidding? They're always “he's.”) wanted to get away with it, would clearly choose country victims over city victims because of the former's relative isolation.

A country victim's guard would be down (except mine!), their screams would be in vain and their mutilated body would likely lie unfound for a considerably longer time than had they been hacked to death on the corner of, say, 14th Street and Grand Avenue. (Well maybe not 14th and Grand downtown Baghdad but those bodies aren't a result of maniacs so much as extremists. Extremists aren't feared in rural Iowa. Except the ones on the campaign trail during caucus season, that is. But I digress.) Perhaps the only rational arguments against random farmhouse murder are country dogs and the fact that most farm folk do not live alone, but rather in hearty familial groups with deep tendencies toward preservation of kith and kin or whatever. I, however, did live alone making me a prime candidate for a rational-thinking, chef's-knife-brandishing, crazed lunatic. And my devoted pet was not Kujo the deathly loyal, blood-lusting Mastiff but rather, Barney the easily startled, sleep-lusting turtle.

A turtle's one basic defense trait, a trait which has kept it virtually unchanged as a life form for millions of years, is not the maniacal aggression in the face of danger which I would so dearly long for in my supreme moment of savage-rural-farmhouse-invasion-induced need. No. Rather it is fear. Turtles are the most scaredy-shit animal on the planet and probably have been for eons.

I've lived around Barney for 13 years and yet still, tomorrow morning when I walk up to him and say “Hellooooo little green Barn-barn! Oh your such a good witto totto, aren't you?! Yes you are! Yes you are!!” he'll immediately retract all appendages as if I were a violent nut case. Imagine if he actually ever encountered a real violent nut case. He would probably turn himself inside out.

Generally my nocturnal panic sessions would start, I imagine, after being awakened from the midst of some freaky dream by a 'coon or the like on my roof or a mouse in my walls. Then I would lie awake. Listening for the intruders. Perhaps they were already in the house. Maybe they've been in the basement for days waiting for me to drop my guard before they creep upstairs and bludgeon me with a log while I sleep.

One thing is for sure. There is no way any killer could walk up the stairs in that creaky old house without being heard. So if I were him I'd... already be upstairs! This is why I kept golf clubs leaning against the walls in ever room of my house. Yes I know. An intruder could just as easily use my own clubs against me but at least it could be a fair fight. “Let's see? A lofted iron against a belly putter... Okay, you gotta give me two strokes cold-blooded killer dude. Wait. I think I'm gonna go with the dual wedge after all.”

In the end, the primal pull of exhaustion would always win out over my feeble fight to stay alert. And since I was never, in fact, murdered I guess I should thank our distant ancestors who found it more evolutionarily successful to get a good night's sleep than to stay awake fretting over possible stalking predators. It could easily have been the opposite. Then I suppose we'd all be walking around like zombies during the day.

One night, recently, I was awakened by neighbors noisily arriving home from a night of carousing or whatever. In my first semiconscious moments I was again back in the isolated old farmhouse which was suddenly besieged by a pack of wilding teenagers. Quickly enough lucidity set in and I returned my racing-but-slowing heart to its cleaved chest and that chest to my bed. A bed warmed in the reality that, no I was not about to be assaulted by rapacious, conscience-free youths, doused in gasoline and burned alive into a Pompeiiesque cinder statue but rather had only been awakened by my asshole neighbors, bless their sweet, inconsiderate, non-murderous hearts.

Living, again, amongst others has brought an end to these foolishly fearful fits. Should I someday fall prey to a sociopathic, black-hearted ripper I will be comforted, ensconced as I am in my new urbanhood, by the thought of having dozens of people within earshot willing to ignore my blood curdling midnight screams and subsequently explaining away the vaguely fusty corpse smell twinging their nostrils every time they walk past my perpetually darkened house. These are the twin pillars upon which community is built, Or whatever.

Sincerely,
“Halloween Hobo” to you

p.s. Right now I'm lying in bed playing eyeball parallax. “Right eye... left eye... right eye... left eye... right eye... lef right eye... left eye.” Beat that Nintendo Wii!