Torn Over Stillwater

…but you already know what you need to do, and we are not going to give you permission to shirk your adult responsibilities (this time). You need to take Jr trick or treating. Cave on this one, and it will give you the moral high ground to be able to take all those other road trips.

Watch the game at home, and do the necessary things to make it as close to a real Oklahoma experience as possible, such as:
1) turn off your lawn sprinklers a month before, to get the dust bowl thing going…
2) throw trash all around the living room…
3) pictures of trailers taped over the windows, to get the scenic backdrop…
4) pull the couch right up 2-feet from the TV, to simulate the short sidelines in OK-lite stadium…
5) when you wake up on the tile Sunday afternoon, write up the usual road trip review, just like you thought it happened.

You will be setting a precedent if you cave now. Here are your talking points against Halloween:

1) Trick-or-Treating is dangerous – what with all those razorblades in apples
2) It’s also sacreligous – a glorified pagan ritual where we celebrate monsters, demons and killers.
3) And, too “adult” for youngsters with all the hookers and naughty nurses.
4) Stillwater was named “Safest” place to trick-or-treat by US News & World Report.
5) Too many costumes unsafe because they’re made in China.
6) Celebrate All Saints Day on Sunday

You and your son go to the game in costume, you buy more candy than he could ever collect and have a candy tailgate outside the stadium.

I have a similar dilemma, as my fiancee’s birthday is on Halloween, and she is avid about the holiday. This year is going to be rough, because I’ll be in Austin, but I’m going to watch that game. I think if I went to Stillwater, that would be roughly equivilent to ending the relationship.

1) We both used the word ‘plethora’ in our posts today. Coincidence? Hmm? Or a sign? A sign that we’re on the same wavelength… this game cannot be missed.

2) My earliest memories are trips to DKR and the Erwin Center. I couldn’t tell you a single thing about a single Halloween.

3) Show and tell: the same tootsie pop as that weird kid who paraded around the neighborhood as a singing pumpkin… or the blade from the windmill we tear off in drunken celebration and give to your kid as a keepsake?

4) Educational opportunity: Illumination by contrast! While pointing at Okies: “This is what happens if you don’t do what your mother and I tell you to do every single time.”

Throw the kid in a duffel bag and make a run for the Red River. We’ll meet you at Eskimo Joe’s.

Give the kid an extra Christmas present. He’ll remember that rather than a fatherless Halloween.

If it was some wedding or family affair I’d say go to the game and then make it up to them later, but with kids you really only get a small window to do stuff like this with them and you gotta soak it up and enjoy it while you can.

Although my parents went to Hawaii over Christmas one year because their school’s basketball team was playing in the Maui invitational, they left us kids at home with my grandmother. I turned out OK, relatively.

My best buddy who is an OSU grad and me a UT grad are going to Stillwater to catch the game while we leave our wives in Edmund, OK, with the kids including my first-born who will have and his second-born who will have their first Halloween without either of us. I will make it up to Baby Jack as I promise to take him to UT games as soon as he can make the Hook ’em sign with his right hand!

In your case 54, on Friday night, there should be plenty of church festivals going on with Halloween stuff plus tons of Haunted Houses to take him too! I say why limit Halloween to one night when you can make it the whole weekend for Jr? Plus think of all the discount candy you can by him come Sunday after? :)