Katie Pumpkinhead’s Pumpkin Patch

 As an adult who lives a perpetually spooky lifestyle, and whose main hobby is collecting decor and the like, I sometimes forget that there are people out there who go Halloween shopping, solely to find themselves a costume. However, after a trip to Party City and Halloween City, the former of which is still exactly where it's always been since I was six, I started remembering the days when I was none other than that eager little costume shopper.  Party City was the Halloween go-to in my childhood, at least in my area. I can probably count on one hand how many of my costumes over the course of a decade and then some didn't come from there. Long before Spirit Halloween, even before the smaller scale pop-up shops like Halloween Express, Everything Halloween, and Halloween Adventure, Party City was the place to go for all things Halloween. I actually was once asked, if I could go back to any store I visited as a child and experience it exactly as it was, what I would choose, and ...

 The last week or so has been rough for me, and my mind has been wandering a lot. I find sometimes when you’re going through things, it helps to think back to times of previous triumph, so today I’d like to share this odd, but weirdly inspiring, story from when I was ten. When I was a kid, I was extremely shy. I really didn’t have much to do with the other kids in my class. However, I made good grades, probably the best in my class at one point in time, so naturally, kids wanted to team up with me on projects. I also think some were just intrigued by my quiet, mysterious, somewhat spooky way. So, although I didn’t really have friends, per se, I had what would probably be described today as frenemies. Two such girls were a pair of BFFs named Tara and Amanda. Amanda was someone I had known since kindergarten. She usually tended to drift more toward the “friend” side, until she met Tara, a girl who moved to our school district in fourth grade and had clearly modeled her entire persona...