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OCTOBER 2020 3 DeCordova Bend Estates LIFE

from the publisher

Happy Halloween!

I just love this time of year. The leaves start to fall, the weather starts to cool, and it’s when all the yummy eats begin starting with Halloween
treats and rolling right through Thanksgiving and Christmas until we swear we’ll never eat again as the New Year rolls in. I so love the little children in
their costumes and the look on their little faces over the excitement that surrounds them. And bless our little pets that are clueless about the costumes
we dress them in, their purpose, or our need, and for tolerating us anyway, always game, just so glad to be a part of our families, their packs.

At my house, we were talking about some of the wildest Halloweens we had experienced and one that came to mind was one when our daughter was
only 3 years old when we lived in Fort Worth on Miracle Lane. Most of the families that lived on Miracle Lane had young children and were fairly young
parents. So needless to say, everyone was up for the Halloween fun. We all decorated our houses, dressed our children as their favorite characters,
bought our little orange pumpkins to catch the candy, and off we went in a little pack door to door.

Most of the children in the pack were really young like our daughter at the time, so we mapped out a few blocks sure that it would be more than far
enough for them. At each door there were special treats and costumed treat givers and the kids were having an amazing time. As we approached
about the midpoint of our well planned mapped route we came to a neighbor’s house where several of the Dads were sitting in lawn chairs in the
driveway. They were all dressed in various costumes from nerd with the black framed, taped, thick lens glasses and the pants pulled way too high, to
a butcher with an apron and a meat cleaver in hand. Sitting in the middle of these grown kids was a giant bowl of candy for the trick or treaters to help
themselves. Well, the children, excited about reaching into this giant bowl of candy and grabbing fists full of candy for themselves ran up to the bowl
and dug in. At the very moment they plunged their little hands in the bowl, Jack, the Dad and large child dressed as the butcher, takes his meat cleaver
and chops off a fake hand that he has sticking out of his long sleeve and resting on the chair arm. CHOP! The fake hand hit the pavement. Not even
the adults were expecting that and everyone in our pack scattered like ants in all directions. Some were screaming, some of the kids started crying,
some were calling Jack everything but his given name, while we scampered around gathering our traumatized children, and a few parents.

As fun as the night had been, our poor little children had enough of that, so we retired to our house so we could distract them from the fright, sit in a
little circle in our living room and dig through their candy haul. We made Jack sit in the corner for being naughty where all the children could see him
and didn’t let him join in the party festivities while all the kids and the Moms made mean faces at him.

The rest of the night the conversation in the room was about how many of our children would need therapy from the incident. How we hoped that most
of them wouldn’t even remember it later, and plotting our revenge on Jack for the foreseeable future. We were all so young, parents and children, in
the neighborhood surrounding Miracle Lane, that the joke became... it was a “Miracle” we all survived, especially our children.

The life lesson from this experience...
The best plans and good intentions are not always enough, also be prepared for the unexpected, because there’s always a Jack in the room.

Have Fun and Be Safe!