Channeling My Inner “Psycho”

We got ourselves some pumpkins Sunday and we did ourselves some carving. It was my first time disfiguring a pumpkin and I was kinda excited. A little bit worried too, as I never stabbed a pumpkin before. Luckily, everything went smoothly and no blood was dropped.

Before beginning, I held the pumpkin up and rubbed it as if it was a genie bottle. I think I may have even talked to it. I took a long look at my pumpkin and assessed what I thought it was telling me about its personality. I decided that it was asking for a crazy face; as in lunatic crazy.

But how to go about it?

Sean recommended that I just followed the natural grooves and lines before deciding which side to start slicing up. and that I didn’t need a template before cutting. Just free-hand it, he said. Silly me, I was all about the colouring inside the lines.

We threw in some Return of the Living Dead to keep us entertained, as we sliced open the top and scooped out the guts. Once all the seeds and gooey threads were removed, I got down to scraping out the inside of the pumpkin. With that done, the stabbing and whittling could begin. I found myself feeling quite Norman Bates at this point and kinda enjoying it.

It’s been since high school since I watched Return of the Living Dead and can I say, it was utterly ridiculous. Campy dialogue and really bad acting. Velveeta at its cheesiest.

I can’t believe that I actually thought that movie was real. It had a disclaimer at the beginning of the movie, “This movie is based on actual events blah blah blah” and parts of the movie was time/date stamped, so you can see why I thought it was a re-enactment of a real life town in Kentucky, overran by zombies. (I was so gullible back then)

The movie may have scared us willy nilly then, but all it did was make us laugh. Braaaains!

We were done by the time the movie was over. I made a crazy face, but somewhere along the way, I felt that my pumpkin was telling me that it wanted some fangs, so I gladly obliged. So now it’s crazy and a vampire!

Sean and I threw tea lights into our pumpkins and stood back to appreciate our handywork. Not too shabby. A good first effort.

I could get used to all this. In fact, there are still a few days left before Halloween to practice and hone my knife skills.