THE SONIC BOOMER
September… I made it!
Glorious September, when the leaves begin turning magnificent colors, when the ground gets crunchy beneath our feet, when the aromatic smell of wood smoke first tinges the air, when the… oh, wait. That’s up north.
But Florida has its September, too, highlighted primarily by the facts that the kids are back in school, the theme parks are navigable again and it’s time to start our holiday shopping, beginning with Halloween.
Has anyone noticed that Halloween is gaining ground, despite the fact that fewer kids go trick-or-treating? The costumes! The decorations! The parties! Retailers without orange and black in their stores are missing a real opportunity. I don’t care what you sell, throw some black glitter onto it because Halloween signals the official start of the holiday season. It’s the biggest thing since the Fourth of July for people like me, shoppers who consider the months between July and October nothing more than one long dry spell.
Just like Christmas has inched its way backward in the calendar, so now has Halloween. Even my antiques store got decked out in bats and cats in August. I know, we’re shameless! (“But, Deb,” you say. “Starting so early, what if you’re running out of stock by October?” Three words: More… shop… ping!) I can always find something to sell. Thanks to TV shows like Oddities, it is now perfectly OK for me to sell disembodied doll heads in my shop. In fact, they sell like hotcakes. I attend auctions all year long, looking for ratty old dolls to send to the guillotine in the fall. I can never find enough.
Objects in jars make great inventory items, too. I get a bunch of creepy-looking plastic things — rats, snakes, leftover doll parts — stick them in glass jars and fill the jars with water. Creepy! To up the fear factor, I throw some yellow or green food coloring in there. The murkier things look, the better. After all, the ultimate goal is to have party guests squinting into the jars saying, “What is that?”
Doll heads and fake science experiments gone awry may not be appropriate for children’s parties, but thank goodness that Halloween is back where it should be — in the hands of alcohol-loving adults. Somewhere between deciding that taking candy from strangers was not a good idea and refusing to get off the couch to walk around the block, adults came up with the brilliant idea of stay-at-home parties. We would dress up… we would eat candy… we would eat black cupcakes and wash them down with vodka!
Yuck.
Kids (always the smartest among us) say hello to everyone on the night of the party, then retreat to their rooms with a pilfered sack of candy corn to watch Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas. They will sleep restlessly, arising before dawn to see what’s left of the cupcakes. In the end, everybody’s happy.
Meanwhile, we have all of September to plot, plan and purchase. Happy fall!
