It’s pumpkin carving time — by far one of the most violent, dangerous and disgusting traditions a family will ever undertake. One of the only occasions you will ever hear sweet little children utter phrases like, “OK, dad, now stab it in the face and then rip some more guts out!”
I look over at my little daughter and remind myself to sleep with one eye open.
Normally I just worry about the large, usually dull knife that I hold in my slippery hand while trying to carve into a slippery pumpkin. I don’t want to be the dad wheeled into the ER with paramedics screaming, “Got another carver with a blade to the femur.”
In the past, pumpkins have been simple, rudimentary affairs — big, gaping mouths. A tooth or two. Large, odd-shaped eyes. Maybe a nose — and it’s a big maybe. Young kids don’t hold parents to high expectations when it comes to pumpkin carving. They’re impressed when you can just stomach pulling out pumpkin guts … or don’t stab yourself in the mid-section.
But this 9-year-old? I’m not so sure this year. I think I’m going to have to step up my game.
“So when we going to carve the pumpkin?” she asked the other day. There was a nuisance to her voice. A higher expectation of the process. Like she was expecting more than just a pumpkin mutilation. That foolishness might have worked in the past, but now she had aspirations and dreams and hopes of an award-winning pumpkin. I fully expected to hear: “So, can you carve that scene from Charlie Brown? The one where they’re in the pumpkin patch?”
“Can I WHAT!?!”
On the Internet, I saw pumpkin carving templates. “Have the perfect Halloween pumpkin,” the site promised. There were bats with sharp and precise angles as if laser cut using NASA-designed software. Words spelled out, “Boo.” One of them was in 3D! Was this what she wanted?
I’m finding that as the child grows older, the demands on my abilities grow, too. Only, unlike her height, my abilities long ago peaked. I’ve maxed out. But a parent doesn’t gain new abilities as he or she ages. If anything, we lose them. Or forget we ever had them. Or stab ourselves in the femur. It’s written into the genetic code of parenting.
Unfortunately for me, a lopsided face with one bucktooth ain’t going to cut it this year.
So I’m sharping up my instruments. Searching for precision carving instruments — Dremel tool and a blow torch? Doing hand strengthening exercises and searching for full-body chain mail. Most of all, I’m just practicing my line for when the ER doc asks how I got the meat cleaver stuck in my femur. “It had to be a spider wearing tap dance shoes!” I’ll say.