Pumpkin Envy

This time of year is interesting because I'm picking up on all the things I missed out on while I was in the NICU. Take Halloween, for instance. Last year, one of the nice nurses at the hospital taped a happy little ghostie to my incubator and that was the extent of the festivities. See it up there in the corner? Nice gesture and all, but nothing to write home about.

Apparently there's much more to it. At this time of year, the weather is supposed to get cooler (hasn't happened yet), people decorate their homes with lots of brown leaves and scarecrows (not sure why) and on the big day, kids roam around neighborhoods dressed up as some strange character and beg for candy. Hence the fish costume. I'm still trying to figure out if this is all socially acceptable.

Anyhow, the unifying factor for the month of October is pumpkins. I'm sure you've seen them, they're these big round orange things for sale on every corner. I was totally confused by the pumpkin concept because when I was born, Mom used to stand over me every day in the NICU and call me her little punkin (note: "punkin" is some kind of cutesie-mommy slang for "pumpkin"). I had assumed this was a name she reserved just for me because I'm so special. That was my first lesson about assumptions.

Mom, Dad and I recently took a trip to the pumpkin patch. This was quite an experience. There were lots of families there with kids of all ages, some even about my size. And pumpkins as far as the eyes could see (and I've got good eyes). There were big ones, small ones, even white ones and some gray ones. Mom and Dad said that I could pick one out to take home. This was a lot of pressure considering my lack of experience with pumpkins.

We cruised around for awhile and stopped by to say hello to the sheep. They were cute, all cozy warm in their sweaters. I saw kids feeding them, but Mom said that I should just look from a distance. Something about filthy animal germs. So we made our way to the long lines of pumpkins and I began my search for the perfect one.

Now I imagine for some there is a scientific approach to choosing a pumpkin. I'm more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-diaper kind of guy, so I was pretty casual about it. I just slapped them all until I found one that sounded about right. Don't get me wrong, this was no easy task. It took a lot of time and thought and good listening skills to find the pumpkin with just the right size and tone. But I was up for the job. And I was successful.

Everything was fine and dandy until I found out that many people bring their pumpkins home only to carve funny faces into them and dump out their insides. They even put candles inside to make them light up. From what I understand, they call these jack-o-lanterns. Not at my house, no siree! My pumpkin is staying a pumpkin. After all that hard work it took to find him, I'm not changing his name to jack-o-anything.

I think I'll call him Bob.