Life Skills Report Card                           Parenting 2.0

     Halloween is just days away.  Sensational though I have been at costumes, decorations and candy over the years, the story which gets the most replay in our family is not a compliment, of course, but a complaint.

     One year I took it upon myself to build a haunted house.  Dry ice boiling in a black cauldron beckoned the children's entrance, rubber bats swinging from spider webs grazed their scalps, and no one could venture forward without first finding the magic button at the bottom of the bowl of brains (cooked spaghetti).  
     The creation which forever made my daughter's "top ten things my mother did to ruin life as I know it" list however was the Hands of the Dead - ten link sausages decorated with long red acrylic nails and yes ok...I confess...accessorized with ketchup impersonating as blood.
     Looking back, I too view my Halloween "Hands" as over the top and know "a better mother wouldn't have".  But, like moms everywhere daily, I was making it up as I went and ....I honestly thought my sausage fingers were cutting age cool. Instead, they have forever defined me as cruel and insensitive, a fact which must be shared with whomever present at every All American Breakfast.
     Not to be gender biased but, I can't help wondering, if I'd had sons instead of daughters...would my Hands of the Dead have earned me the title of "World's Best Halloween Mom?"
     
 Hugs! Mama Marlaine  www.lifeskillsreportcard.com