Planet Brenda

Thursday, October 27, 2005

HOW TO CARE FOR YOUR MONSTER

When I was a little kid, one of my favorite books was called "How To Care For Your Monster" by Norman Bridwell, the same dude that did the "Clifford" series. "How To Care For Your Monster" was a take-off on the "how to care for your dog/cat" type books, except the pets were every kind of monster imaginable. This book really fulfilled me....monsters, humor, AND cool little drawings, all in one package. I bet I opened this little paperback a million times.

I enjoyed all of the monsters but I became obsessed with the vampire. This is partly due to the recessive Goth Gene that seems to run in my blood and partly because.....according to the book.....this was actually DO-ABLE!!! It states right there in the book....all you have to do is catch a bat in your cap and voila! You have a pet vampire! And there's bats galore around my house at sunset!

I was totally convinced it could be done. Being a little girl, I didn't have any caps at that time, but that was no problem. I just enlisted the handy Gullible Neighborhood Boy to give me one of his. Of course, I had to explain to him what I was going to do with it. He just stared at me blankly until I handed him The Book. Ohhhhhh.....

Well, he was totally down with it after seeing the book. We met at the front of my house after we'd had supper. It was the end of a summer day and the sun was going down. Gullible Boy showed up with his pee-wee baseball cap. We tossed it into the air a few times and it tossed well, the brim gave it enough leverage to get it pretty high into the air. In fact, we almost lost sight of our bat-catching goal because we were having so much fun seeing who could toss the hat higher.

Until I spotted a bat. I already knew we'd see one, we see them every single night around here. But now we knew the secret to actually catching one. All you had to do was toss your cap into the air and the bat would fly right in....the book said so!!! I was a child possessed...I wanted my very own vampire.

The bat was flying around in that crazy unpredictable flight like bats usually do. Gullible Boy chickened out on tossing the cap up. I wasn't missing my chance, baby, I snatched that hat out of his hands and tossed it......and it was like something out of a movie or something....like one of those basketball movies where the winning shot swishes through the net in slo-mo. The cap goes up in the air....it was a perfect shot....perfect. And I swear to you on everything I have to swear:

That bat flew right into the cap.

Just like the book said it would. The bat flew straight into it and next thing you know, the cap is headed back to the ground towards us like a shooting star, with the bat still in it! I never had any doubts that anything BUT this would happen.....yet when it did, I had a major freakout and so did Gullible Boy. You've never seen two children run so fast! We never saw the cap hit the ground. We didn't try to go back and get it, either, until the next day. I guess the bat hit the ground and got himself back up and on his way.

But I betcha anything I would have had myself a real life vampire pet if I'd just been a little more courageous.

Your Halloween Pic of the Day: Pet Monsters!

Posted by brendalove@gmail.com @ 9:34 AM |