A couple of years ago, Shane and I were working at Fruth one evening before Halloween. I like to demo costumes, and I decided to do a little Halloween makeup. I did my face to look like I was in a fight or car wreck or something. It was very realistic, and my customers were freaking out. As the evening evolved, so did our story. We told people that we had an argument and Shane beat me up. One of my regular customers came in, and when he saw me he asked, "Who did that to you?!" I was in full joking mode and told him that Shane did it. Then I saw the storm clouds gathering on the guy's face. He was furious. He said, "He's going to take care of him!" He added, "He doesn't know what I do for a living! I WILL take care of this." When I saw how mad he was, I started to deny the story, and I could see he didn't believe me. He thought I was a typical female covering for her man or something. The more I denied it, the more he got worked up. Finally I had the presence of mind to smear the makeup to prove that I was not hurt. I did thank the man for his concern, and it was nice that one of my customers actually cared enough to come to my defense. I guess I should become a Hollywood makeup artist or something. Shane had no idea how close he came to getting his behind kicked that night. I did not tell anybody else that story either. I have had a lot of good Halloweens. My last really good one was my dad's last Halloween. I picked him up at the nursing home and took him to dinner at the Waffle House. He loved it because he got to eat biscuits and gravy and other food that he wasn't supposed to have. Then I took him to the house. He sat on the porch all evening giving candy out to trick-or-treaters. They would get two or three pieces and he would get one. He was a diabetic, but he knew that I wouldn't say anything because of the holiday. He loved giving candy to the kids. He had his Yorkie, Katie, with him. She was dressed up in her devil costume, which said "Killer" on the shirt. Katie and Nikita (our other dog) would absolutely go nuts every time a trick-or-treater came on the porch. Daddy loved hollering at her not to bite anybody and keeping her under control. He knew that she was prone to sneaking up behind people and biting them on the back of their ankles. We laughed a lot that night, both at the dogs and the kids. I took him back to the nursing home at the end of the night. He had just as good a time as I did. He died four days later.

When I was at Ohio State, our dorm was having a Halloween party. It was a typical college party full of fun and drunken debauchery and such. We were all in our costumes, cruising from room to room and floor to floor just having a good time in general. I was a ghost. I took the sheet off my bed and cut a hole in it for my head, then I took my pillowcase, cut out two eyeholes, and circled them with a black marker. If I had been smarter I would have cut out a mouth hole to make drinking easier! A friend and I went into a suite belonging to some other friends. They weren't there, so we decided to visit a room we didn't know—a party, you know. We walked in and it was full of Black men. We tried to laugh and talk with them, but they weren't friendly; it started to hurt my feelings, even though I was drunk. Finally one of them said, "What in the hell are you supposed to be, anyway?!" I replied in my West Virginia accent that I was a ghost. They all looked at each other as if to say, "Yeah, right." It was obviously not a friendly atmosphere, so my friend and I left. Once we were out, my friend pointed out that they had thought I was dressed as a Ku Klux Klan member. My Southern accent only made things worse. That possibility hadn't even occurred to me, but after looking in the mirror I could see why they would think that. I felt terrible and wanted to go back and tell them I was definitely not a Klan member, but my friend convinced me it would be best not to make a big deal of it. It just goes to show that appearances can be deceiving and you should never assume anything about someone. When I was in junior high, we were in the Smoky Mountains for a family vacation. We were at a go-kart track in Pigeon Forge, a tourist town at the base of the hills. My brother, Billy, my sister, Rhonda, and I were having a ball, driving around the go-kart track at full speed like we did when we were kids. We didn't know what slow meant on anything! I had used up my time and was sitting in the van with my mom and dad, watching Billy and Rhonda go around the track when my sister wrecked. I remember seeing the whole thing and sitting frozen, even though I wanted to help her. One second she was flying around the track and the next she was spinning in circles (not rolling, thank God). She was lying on her back in the go-kart. When it stopped spinning, she did not get up.