Let’s take a journey together, shall we? Consider me your ghost of Halloween past. Let’s venture back to October 1993. It was a time before Twilight, before Edward and Bella, Sookie Stackhouse, and the Vampire Dairies. It was the time of ... Buffy. Let me explain.
It was the week of Halloween, the leaves fluttering to the forest floor around our house in a picturesque mountain setting. But I didn’t care. All I cared about was my Boyz II Men tape, Doc Martins, and an ever-increasing amount of oversized plaid shirts. I also cared about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I cared about this movie a lot. It was THE movie. And I had yet to see it, which was a source of great panic for me since all the girls at school modeled themselves after Kristy Swanson. And how could I begin to mimic her red lip stick and ballerina prom skirt if I hadn’t seen the movie?
After much pleading, Mom swung by the video store and picked up a copy just for me. I was giddy. My little sister Rebecca was also giddy because her entire existence centered on copying my every move. The suburban creaked and rattled home, the Ozark Mountains surrounded in cold darkness as I clutched our rented video cassette in my hot little hand.
Our father was less than enthused about the prospect of spending the night watching a movie about a bleached blond teenager and floating vampires in a high school gym. As the dad of three daughters, Reggie is perhaps the most tolerant man on earth. But even he had his limits, and watching Kristy Swanson and Luke Perry stab vamps with stakes and make out was just a footstep over his threshold of tolerance.
“No,” he stated resolutely when we got home, “I don’t want to watch that. Let’s watch Lonesome Dove instead.” My father is a tried and true Lonesome Dove fan. He can quote it. He could even re-enact it if the mood struck him correctly.
“But DADDYYYYYY,” I yelled.
“Yeah ... Dadddyyyyyyy ...” piped in Rebecca, my ever-present parrot.
My father, never one to enjoy being the bad guy, shifted tactics. “Fine. If you and Becca will both run to the wood pile and back, alone, no flashlight, we’ll watch Buffy the School Bimbo Slayer, or whatever it’s called.”
It was a fantastic move. A real life Check Mate. It belonged in the Genius Parenting Hall of Fame. Instead of crushing my dreams of teen moviedom outright, he decided to present me with a choice-based question that would inevitably lead to my kicking a rock and saying, “Never mind, we don’t have to watch it.”
The woodpile was a short walk from the house, through the woods, in the dark.
