Pictures are up, you can see them all in my gallery, some of you might recognize a few people… 🙂
Here is one of the more fun shots of the kids all having a conversation with my skeleton puppet. I can see from the pictures, that I do have som
e work to do on rounding out his shoulders, and making his neck look better. Over all most of the interactions were nice, I scared a few kids, had interesting conversations with a few others. Gave educational advice… Really… If you are taking advice on education from a 9 ft skeleton, you might want to see a licensed therapist. 🙂 Sadly, like every year there were one or two interactions that broke bad. The worst of all was the 12-14 year old punk that thought it would be funny to jump on my back. The skeleton puppet is basically an aluminum framework built into a backpack. All told, when clothed, it weighs around 50 pounds. I wear this for nearly 5 hours straight. So a 150 pound kid jumping on my back 3 hours into the night is NOT a welcome addition. Sadly, he did this after sneaking up on me… And as a result I bellowed “GET OFF!!!”, thrashed, and then instinctively donkey kicked him about 2 feet behind me into a tree… “Oh my god! He kicked me! He Actually Kicked me!!!”, he moaned as he limped away. I turned to him, and told him to get off the property, and don’t come back. “…And next time you might want to think before sneaking up on someone and jumping on them!” His friends, of course, started taunting me, to which I went into my full outside voice, (I’m actually amped in the puppet so the voice comes from the head and not from the chest) magnified by the amp, shouted “GET OUT OF HERE!!!!” and charged them at a full run. They screamed, ran and didn’t stop running until the next block. Hopefully they ended up with some laundry to do…
My favorite comment of the night came from two women parked in an SUV across the street enjoying the show, “I’m 82 and shes 56, and we are not to old for Trick-Or-Treating!”
I had a lot of great helpers this year, my usual two co-workers, Zack, and Christopher got here very early, and helped with the setup, which was a godsend. The Gardner family, and also arrived a few hours early to help out with the final setup. All of the reliable help made it possible to actually have everything done, and working with time enough to eat and get dressed before the start of Trick-Or-Treating. The extra help made tear down go lighting fast. It was incredible to have such a great team and I consider myself very lucky.
Thank you again to everyone who helped out, showed up to watch, said kind words, or just stared in awe at the sheer spectacle of the event.
John's Musings 