Halloween was strange this year. It started out innocently enough. With me dressed up as Lt. Nyota Uhura. Yup, I’m unequivocally and unapologetically a trekkie. I don’t care if you judge me. I may not go to conventions, I may not be able to quote every line from every show, but I did suffer from a slight depression when Star Trek: The Next Generation went off the air. And I think Patrick Stewart is one helluva sexy granddad. I stalk him on Broadway. Sean is aware of my unhealthy fixation with a 70 year old man. He’s understanding. Sexy doesn’t fade with age!
But I digress. I dressed up as Uhura from the re-imagined movie:
Ok, I’m not Zoe Saldana. But I think I did the character proud, no? So I was enjoying a night out at the Hudson Tavern with my roommate, Lidia:
A very crowded Halloween party sponsored by the Hoboken ski club. We followed a group to another party. Fun was being had. And then when our friend was giving us a much needed ride in his SUV, we were hit by a speeding drunk driver who blew her stop sign. We were two blocks from my house.
Our car:
And her car:
I know it’s hard to see what happened in this photo (camera phones don’t yield the best quality photos), but that’s her car, wrapped around a pole. Our car was on a sidewalk, 1 foot from a tree.
Maybe our friend has the reflexes of a cat. Maybe we were divinely intervened with… I don’t know. But we walked away, with a few aches and pains. Mild cases of whiplash. To say that we were lucky is an understatement. We were blessed because the other driver was slumped against her passenger, and she was unresponsive. The police, the ambulances, and the fireman were dispatched quickly. She was taken to the hospital.
We get a lot of accidents on my street. It’s a running joke, in fact, with the dispatchers, and the responders. But it isn’t a running joke for me. We live in terror on this street. My house was hit by a car once:
That pole was my neighbors. (His house was hit twice.) My house is on the left, and then there was the matter of one of the cars:
Upon viewing the date of the house hitting accident, I realized that the car hit my house almost 2 years ago to the date! October 29, 2008! I’m really creeped out about that. I might actually be cursed.
Anyway, there are a lot of accidents on my street. And the local government is aware of it. But they’re not doing anything to help us. We live in terror, and they don’t care very much. I’m not a happy resident of Jersey City.
But back to Halloween. We wandered home, and I slept only a few hours. I woke up terrified. I love Halloween. I do. But I like dressing-up and candy factor of Halloween, not the death and gore aspects of Halloween. I don’t like having my life endangered. And so, we carved our pumpkins instead of going to an awesome sick/kick-ass party at the TRIBeca Grand. I think we made the right decision. When cars are trying to run you down, it’s probably best to put a house as a barrier between you and the cars.
Our pumpkins turned out adorable. Inside:
And out:
(Gosh, I gotta get that exterior paint job done soon!) You might be wondering, what’s up with the scary lumpy pumpkin:
This guy is the Superfreak. (I can’t type that word without singing Rick James in my head. I loved Rick James.) He was engineered to be ugly. And he was really popular with the kids. We had over 50! For those of you that don’t live in an urban area, that’s a lot of kids! Everyone asked about the pumpkin. “What is it?!”
“It’s the superfreak!” I felt very popular. I tried to get Lidia to put on her costume (I put on mine), but the magic was gone. A near death experience does that. And it makes you really appreciate the important things in life. Like the 50+ little ones who were so cute, and took almost all of the candy we bought. Now Lidia and I don’t have to worry about gaining Halloween candy weight! The accident helped me appreciate the pumpkins we carved. And our new cat Ralston:
Who was also popular with the kids. And who sleeps on me when I’m working:
All of the little things.
And a few big things, too.
