I was needing a good laugh this week after the weekend, and funeral, in West Virginia.  I got one in the form of my neighborhood and the uber-competitiveness of it, as I just described it to an old friend of mine. 

Halloween decorations are aplenty right now in my suburban area.  One person on my street got those huge, thick spiderweb thingys and hung them all over her bushes in the front of the house.  A few days later, another 5 or 6 houses had also been decorated with the same spiderwebs.  A week later, I think we are the only house left standing without thick cottony spiderwebs in our front bushes, save that one house that has NO Halloween decorations (must be Mormons or Menonites or something living there).  I’m a rebel, and didn’t even realize it! 

It just so reminds me of high school, when my friend Erica had the first pair of Gasoline jeans.  Gasoline jeans were the bomb back then, especially the ones with the faded front stitched to an equally fabulous acid-washed back.  Two tone jeans!  Of course they were skin tight - and probably caused a lot of female problems later on in life, not to mention a ton of camel-toe sightings.  But I digress. 

Erica had the first pair of Gasoline jeans I can remember, and being in the popular crowd, her friends all followed suit. Within a matter of weeks, you were totally uncool, totally dorkish, and a complete loser if you were wearing Lees or Levi’s or god forbid, something from JC Penney or Sears.  (Fashion note:  I also remember that the best thing to wear with the jeans was a white oversized t-shirt, decorated with puffy neon paints - and I’ve polled other friends from different areas of the country and none remember that, so apparently that epidemic of bad taste was mercifully confined to northern Michigan.)

Within 12 months or so, I convinced my mother to fork out the ridiculous amount of money it took to buy Gasoline jeans.  By then, of course, everyone was on to something new.  As I continue to be in my life, I am hopelessly behind the fashion trends, and apparently the home decorating trends too. 

I sucked up my inherent fear of my neighborhood (all the moms I’ve seen look like Botox models and wear very tight clothing and very high heels - to the bus stop - at 7 AM!) and attended a Halloween party for the kids.  Everyone was nice (okay, most of them were nice), and I think some of them actually might work outside of the house.  I didn’t feel too much like a social pariah, but since both of my children were terrified by the decorations, Mike and I spent most of our time calming, consoling, and feeding Lily and Arden.  There wasn’t a whole lot of time left for socialization before we had to go home for bedtime. 

I swear to you though, as I left, I heard someone say, “Pssst - they’re the ones with the crappy Halloween decorations!”