I Don't Know Jack...O' Lantern

So, last week, when the receptionist at my company announced a pumpkin-carving contest for Halloween, I thought immediately of husband S and his talent for drawing funny little cartoon faces, and I smugly signed on as a contestant. The idea was that S would be my "ghost carver," so to speak. My secret weapon. So full of hubris was I that I even chose the largest pumpkin I could find from the dozen or so displayed for the taking on the second-floor lunchroom table. My fiendish, somewhat deceptive plan was to take said specimen home and have S do all the designing and most of the actual carving. I thought I might help gut the thing and offer words of encouragement here and there, but he'd be the actual artist toiling away on our dazzling orange masterpiece. Back at work, I imagined, I'd present the jack-o'-lantern as my own, win the "Funniest" or "Most Creative" category, humbly accept all the praise and admiration that my coworkers were sure to heap upon me, and drive home with a big fat prize for S and me to share.

Well. You know what they say about the best laid plans.

Not 24 hours after I'd volunteered for the contest and gloated about my sure win to more than a few coworkers, S was ordered to Orlando for four days on business, courtesy of one unsympathetic Fox Sports Net. At first I did the math wrong (no surprise there) and calculated that S would return from the land of Katherine Harris and hanging chads in time to help me whip up our Jack-O'-Lantern To Beat All Jack-O'-Lanterns, but upon double-checking my arithmetic, I realized I'd be doing the damn pumpkin all on my own. Bummer! Let down! Anxiety!

I figured it would be sort of lame to back out of the contest, especially after I'd made such a big freaking deal about it to begin with. So, last night, I made a jack-o'-lantern. By myself!

I'd been dreading it all day. Honestly, I hadn't gotten anywhere near the inside of a pumpkin since I was a kid. Back then, my mom and dad would clear the kitchen table, spread newspaper all over it, drag the trashcan over, set up the pumpkin and the various cutting instruments, and do the majority of the work, with enthusiastic creative direction from my brother and me. Aside from pulling out a few token handfuls of stringy pumpkin innards, however, I was always more of an observer than a participant. (Once I tried to salvage the pumpkin seeds and toast them in the oven. That was sort of a bust. My parents were sweet about it, but I think we all knew the idea was better in theory than in practice.)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanywho, I got home from work last night, dragged my big ol' pumpkin indoors, set it up on the kitchen table, and wondered nervously how I was going to pull this thing off on my own. A skilled procrastinator, I spent several minutes preparing. Fancying myself a careful pumpkin surgeon, I went about choosing about half a dozen of my sharpest knives from their various kitchen drawers and laying them in a neat row on the table. I removed all non-essential items from the table and disinfected it with cleaner and bleach. I wiped down the pumpkin. Finally, like Mom and Dad used to do way back when, I dragged the trashcan over to my little surgical theater and removed its lid.

The stage was set.

Fortunately, I had a design in mind. Constant worry over the outcome of next week's presidential election precluded me from dreaming up any idea that wasn't political or civic in nature. All I can think about these days is Please John Kerry, Win and Please George W. Bush, Run Home to Your Native Crawford and Leave Ruling the Free World to the Grownups, which doesn't leave much room for creative thought. Fearing, however, that my very corporate work environment might react in a rather Ashcroftian way to an outright political endorsement-especially for "the liberal senator from Massachusetts"-I opted for a simple get-out-the-vote message for my pumpkin. "VOTE," my pumpkin would read. And I'd try to get the date in there, November 2, if there was room. At lunch that day I'd bought some tempura paint, a few brushes, and a package of those little star stickers teachers use, with the idea that my presumably horrid carving skills could be offset a bit by some jaunty red, white, and blue decoration.

After escaping to a nearby restaurant with a friend for dinner, I was back in my kitchen with everything ready to go and my design in mind. It was only 8:00, so at least time pressure wasn't an issue. The first and most difficult task was to cut off the top of the pumpkin and eviscerate the thing. I had a lot of trouble wielding the carving knife with grace and accuracy at first. And the walls of the pumpkin were about an inch and a half thick! Honestly, sweat sprang to my brow from the effort. Gutting the pumpkin by reaching in and yanking out its gooey, slimy strings and shiny seeds was more fun. Sometimes it's just plain great to get your hands dirty. I scooped and squished the pumpkin pulp and dangled gobs of it in front of my perplexed cat's nose.

Next up, blueprinting my design. I started by using red pen to outline the letters V, O, T, E and the numbers 11 and 2 (for November 2) on the front of the pumpkin. Easy enough. Then, the carving. It took a few minutes and several near-finger-amputations before I got into my groove. The toughest part was cutting around narrow strips of pumpkin flesh, but otherwise, I managed to control the knives without any serious mishaps. (I learned this morning from a pumpkin-carving coworker that one can purchase an actual pumpkin-carving tool specifically for the purpose of jack-o'-lanterning. Who knew?)

What surprised me was how much I enjoyed my little pumpkin-carving adventure. Bent over the fat pumpkin in my bright kitchen with rain falling outside and the McKrells singing away on my stereo, I found myself falling into a bit of a meditative, happy trance. Toonces kept me company as I carved away and hummed along. Most fun of all was the post-cutting painting. Uncapping my "Crayola tempura paints" and filling a cup with water for cleaning the paintbrushes, I was taken back to my elementary-school art classes with Ms. Lotto, where we students would chatter with each other contentedly while working at those long, sunlit tables, perched atop rusty metal stools. I remember enjoying the way my paintbrush water would grow more and more colorful and dark as class wore on. Because of the red and blue paint I used last night, my paintbrush water turned a deep shade of violet that reminded me of grape juice.

I finished my little piece de resistance at around 10 p.m., took a hairdryer to it to speed the paint-drying and slow down the progress of the damp rot that had settled into the pumpkin's rear wall, and snapped a few digital pics. Will I win the pumpkin-carving contest at my work? Lawd no. Will anyone but me vote for the Get-Out-The-Vote-O'-Lantern? Doubtful. But damn if I didn't have a swell time making it!