Halloween I and II

My friends and I were hanging out tonight, and while Amy was flipping around we saw that Halloween was on AMC. Watching a movie on AMC is a little bit better than watching one on Sci-fi, but not much. The thing is, AMC not only plays regular commercials, they play long, endless ads for their own shit. And on a side note- they just played a car commercial and Simon & Garfunkel's "The Only Living Boy in New York" is featured in it. What the fuck. I know he lost money on The Capeman but he's still gotta have a shitload of cash, does he really need to do a car commercial?

Anyway, sometimes I feel like that book The Polar Express, where as you get older you can't hear the bell ring anymore. I feel bad when, say, it's December 23 and I'm still not in the Christmas spirit the same way I used to be. Even as a teenager I'd get a special feeling in December, even around Thanksgiving. Some years Christmas feels like just another day.

But watching Halloween (and Halloween II- it's on now) a week before the 31st, I'm starting to get that old feeling. The trees are beautiful and I love the smell of the leaves on the ground. This past weekend in my friend's neighborhood someone was burning leaves and it was the coolest smell.

Thinking back to when I was younger makes me realize how truly lucky I was. I always assumed that every kid, around the world, had a basically good life and were cared for. We were just a middle class family and sometimes my brothers and I would call our parents cheap, but if we wanted something we usually got it. And we were always safe. Our extended family and our parent's friends are good, kind people who always treated us so well.

It's always hard for me to imagine people having genuinely bad, ugly childhoods, and not feeling safe at home. When I was thirteen I was friends with a very nice girl who lived on the other side of the city, about a twenty minute walk. She told me that when she was ten one of her mother's boyfriend's molested her. No charges were ever brought and her mother still talked to the gut. It's still unbelievable to me.

One time I saw a remake of Les Miserables from the mid 1990s. Claire Daines was telling her boyfriend that she can't go away from him and leave her father behind. She says something like "You don't understand- it isn't just that he raised me. I grew up in his love". That reminds me so much of my parents. My brothers and I grew up in their love. That was our house. Their love for us was everywhere and in everything they did. They didn't sleep in, or go out and leave us with babysitters; at least one of them was always there.

We may have been a little sheltered and a little spoiled, and while none of us grew up to be perefect adults all three of us are, essentially, good people. They didn't raise us to be successful, nor did they make us into do-gooders, they just wanted us to be kind and to, at least, think of other people.

I remember when I started school we were sitting down to dinner and my mother said that we should never make fun of someone because they were deaf or fat or weren't pretty or handsome. They said it's never good to hurt someone's feelings and I always remembered that. I also wished that more parents had that same talk with there kids- school would've been a lot different. Do any parents say that to their kids? I'd say yes, but not many.

Like I said, I think we were sheltered in some ways, buit they did let us buy candy and watch horror movies late at night and buy whatever records we wanted. Our parents weren't controlling, just cautious. I saw my parents Friday night and, still, they're worried about me, and my mom has no problem letting me know that as a guy in his thirties who doesn't own a car, I'm a loser.

I've got a lot of changes to make. I've made a lot of mistakes and I've let my life go down the tubes, but the thing is, I've always known the right thing to do. And the moment I decide to stop fucking up I can turn everything around. I've always known what the correct choice was, I just didn't make it.

Luckily, both my parents are in good health. Still I worry that they might not see me turn things around and they might leave worrying about my future. For that reason I've decided to change things now. If I do things right I can have my life in good shape by New Years. I think Christmastime With Clementine is the first step towards fixing things.