Halloween

Each year at Halloween our church hosts a “Pumpkin Patch” party. To get a mental picture, imagine a large building with 2-600 little kids all dressed up in their costumes playing various carnival type games, door prizes, balloons, and other exciting stuff for kids. Jen and I are in a group and our group volunteered to serve at the event and were assigned to assorted positions.

I was one of 11 people assigned to security detail. It is Halloween so a costume would be necessary. I had aspirations of being a Roman Centurion but a $15 plastic helmet and sword doesn’t do it justice and a “good” costume with real metal helmet and sword was a bit much at $800.

I didn’t give the costume much more thought until last night when Jen brought up the matter. Since we were now in the 11th hour, we were limited to clothing options in the closet. Jen came up with a great idea, an Agent from The Matrix. I already had the black suit and black square sunglasses. The white iPod headphones made a perfect earpiece, so only a few accessories were needed. A trip to Wal*Mart to acquire a black tie, tie clip, and hair gel and I was in business for a whopping $21.

The real work was done last night, reviewing the movie again to get the lines down: “Hello Mr. Anderson”, and other classics like, “I’m going to enjoy watching you die Mr. Anderson” expressed in monotone eloquence. I’m quite pleased to report that it was a smashing success. The most common comment was “You look so professional”, followed closely by “You look like an agent”. Everyone got the “government agent” part. Members of demographic profiles that would likely have seen the movie got it immediately, and everyone else guessed Men In Black, or CIA agent.

Defining moments were intimidating 15 year olds with nothing more than an expressionless stare and issuing an appropriate agent greeting to a miniature Neo. The little Neo was quite taken by the experience as well. We enjoyed ourselves very much this evening and hope that you too did something enjoyable and memorable on this holiday.