It's the Great Pumpkin, Christian Grey!

If You Build it, he will come

"Each year, the Great Pumpkin rises out of the pumpkin patch that he thinks is the most sincere. He's gotta pick this one. He's got to. I don't see how a pumpkin patch can be more sincere than this one. You can look around and there's not a sign of hypocrisy. Nothing but sincerity as far as the eye can see," Linus says on "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown."

It's Halloween Eve and we're watching this movie in the family room —Ana, the kids and I, and about seventeen of Phoebe's stuffed animals. We've got our popcorn and cider and we're all toasty under a big throw that matches our candy corn colored knit socks that I had specially made by an elderly woman in Norway who does such things. Hey, if you're going to do Halloween, you have to do Halloween right. And every holiday demands family socks.

"What does si-seer mean?" Teddy asks, putting popcorn up his nose and then blowing it out at Phoebe, who promptly screams, but then clocks him one in the arm.

"Sincere," I enunciate. "It means keeping popcorn out of noses and sisterly fists away from brotherly arms." Ana and I pull them apart and I pick a popped kernel that survived the big blow out of his nose. "It also means you don't tell any lies, and you love something truly, with all of your heart, immeasurably." I look to Ana with what else—sincerity.

"Like I love all of the oooni-corns, Daddy?" Phoebe asks, referring to her three year old obsession with the mythical creatures. Five of which sit propped on the couch above my head. We're good friends; we have tea biweekly.

"Yes, just like the unicorns," I say.

"I want tricks or treats!" Phoebe yells, throwing her hands in the air as the kids in this cartoon cut holes out of sheets to go as ghosts for the door-to-door activities. Since when did dads get off in the costuming department so easily? A couple of scissor slices into an old sheet and the kids are happy? I've been conversing with designers for over a month.

Teddy is now glued to the television screen. I haven't seen him this concentrated on something since I told him if he counted all the green jellybeans in a jar he could get a pair of sneakers that lit up. He didn't even know how to count yet, but of course he still won. 

I don't understand this movie at all. Who the heck is this Great Pumpkin? He doesn't sound like someone you'd want to wait out at night for in a deserted dark patch situation. He sounds terrifying— like a demon who rises out of the earth in judgement of dishonest fall vegetables and their evil purveyors. Sounds like half the people in line at the Whole Foods. Wait, is a pumpkin a vegetable? No, I think it's a fruit. Why are all the good vegetables, fruits?

"Did you ever see him, Daddy?" Teddy asks.

"Who? The Great Pumpkin?" I ask and Teddy nods. "No, but I never had a particularly sincere patch." Ana snorts a laugh at that one.

"Daddy growed fibbers!" Phoebe yells out and laughs. What? Oh, my pumpkins weren't sincere. She's so quick.

We continue to watch. As it progresses I grow more and more confused. Who the hell gives kids rocks for Halloween and why is Charlie Brown perpetually on the receiving end of them in his candy bag? Why does Lucy remind me of Kavanagh? And who lets kids bob freely for apples? It's just a pit of toxic germ water in there. And worst of all, how is that boy sleeping and shivering at four in the morning out in some pumpkin patch while his sister, who can't be north of eight herself, has to go get him and take him to bed? Those parents should be arrested for child endangerment. Have we ever seen the parents? Are we sure all the parents haven't been eaten by the Great Pumpkin? This isn't a happy kids' show, it's a Halloween horror tale!

"Well, that was a fun movie," Ana says as the film concludes.

"It's over?" I ask, watching the credits roll. "But, we never saw him."