Halloween Indoctrination

     I’ve blogged before about my enthusiasm for all things Halloween.  Now that I have grandchildren, it would follow that I introduce them to the thrills and chills of the season.  OK, since Luke is just two I have to tread lightly there lest I get reported to some agency of some sort.  But he’s enjoying the spooky season now as much as any two-year-old, I think.

     Here are the photos to prove it.  Whether it’s holding up the pumpkin he found during a local pumpkin hunt, admiring the creepy spiders on the side of a house at a Crossroads Village ghost and goodies event, or playing with the Halloween display in our bay window, Luke’s interest and appreciation is obvious.

    If you say that two-year-olds should be engaging in less things macabre and more things developmental, let me add that there’s education bonuses to horror, even at the age of two.  Luke’s favorite Halloween creature  is the spider and he particularly likes monster spiders like the gigantic arachnid in the movie Tarantula.

    When he watches the movie trailer from our DVD, he reads aloud the phrases he recognizes as they come on the screen:

    “Bullets can’t stop it.”  “Dynamite can’t kill it.”  “Tarantula.”  Man, if he isn’t pre-school material already.  I can see him zombie-walking into pre-school (he’s learned to do a good zombie walk too), then speaking up when the teacher pulls out a stuffed animal—“Dynamite can’t kill it.”

     Not only word recognition, but our Halloween fun develops leadership skills.  A couple weekends ago we took our grandsons to the Crossroads “Halloween” Village near Flint.  It’s relatively tame fun with a train ride down a track among some painted wooden spooks and adults in costume passing out treats in the village.

     They also had a straw minion maze built in a Despicable Me theme.  We coaxed our pre-school grandkids into the entrance, then I went around the straw-bale labyrinth to the end to wait.  I could see over the top Grant leading Luke around this corner and down this or that path.  Using their problem-solving skills, they were.  Never mind that most parents were in there themselves to help their own kids through the maze.

     I was confident they could do this themselves, even when Grant took a wrong turn and started back the opposite way they came.  I noticed Luke even took over the lead at one point.  I knew they’d make it out before dark and they did.  Now Luke leads his grandma and I down wooded paths near our home.

    Luke, pointing down the path:  “This way.”

    Me:  “This way?”

    Luke:  “Yep.”

     I can’t say nothing scares Luke, though.  We were playing a music video of Michael Jackson’s Thriller, which is scary enough in itself, when Wendy and I broke into our own version of the zombie dance.  Luke covered his head and said, “No dance, grandpa.”  Guess there’s some things even scarier than Michael Jackson’s Thriller.