Halloween Party 1980

by **Jim** Thu Sep 20, 2018 3:14 pm

I’ve been asked to recall the Halloween Night that I broke my leg.

Paula and I lived in a neighborhood of young family’s our age. It was 1980.
Daryl and Gay, and their three kids, lived across the street and up three houses from us. Gay was a stay at home mom, and Daryl was on the San Marcos City Council where we lived in Southern California.
We were invited to a Halloween Party this year that they were preparing for us, our neighbors next door, Charlie and Deedee, the neighbors across the street, Dwayne and Ria, and members of the city council and the Mayor of San Marcos.
Ria was nine months pregnant and ready to pop. What a sight she was in her bright orange pumpkin costume. I remember I was dressed as Andy Capp, Deedee was a brown and white dog of some sort, with floppy ears. The other costumes elude me at the moment.
We were all pretty big on parties. Jacuzzi parties, Kalua making parties, Long Island Ice Tea recipe parties, any and all Holiday parties, and so on. This is the first time the city council and the Mayor were going to be in attendance though.
I felt obligated to make the event memorable….
I drank moderately, and socialized. I found many of the guys on the city council to be fun loving guys like me. After a brief side trip to the john, I got an idea. I checked Gay’s hall closet and found a 12 pack of toilet paper. Gay was a big fan of Costco bulk purchases. I was a big fan of extracurricular activities.
I gathered up several friends and councilmen, and laid out my plan for toilet papering the house. It was after midnight and needed to be accomplished soon, before people started going home.
Outside we started tossing the rolls of TP up onto the roof. There was a light layer of dew on the shake shingles, but the rolls just weren’t rolling properly for maximum effect. I needed to come up with a better way. With my brain engaging with the blood alcohol content in my blood, I was able to figure out the best course of action. I needed to get up on that roof.
By climbing onto the side yard fence, I was able to catch the corner of the roof and shimmy up onto it. Perfect! I was catching the tossed rolls and heaving them over, to the rear of the single story house. This was going to look so cool.
My dress shoes I wore as part of my costume were not gripping the slippery shingles very well though. Only four or five rolls into the papering project, I slipped to my knee. While trying to regain my footing, I ended up on my belly, then I went sliding in a spiral motion to the ground. My landing on my back resulted in a thud and a cracking noise that was followed by dead silence. Then Dwayne declared…I think he broke his Achilles Heal!
It was all fun and games until someone went inside and told the ladies.
I couldn’t stand or walk. I would just lay there and laugh until someone tried to move me. Then I’d howl like a wounded dog. It sounded so pathetic, I would start laughing again. I’m looking up at a dozen people standing around me, and I clearly see the disgusted look on Peachy’s face as she barks out orders to the guy’s to just pick me up and carry me across the street and put me on our couch.
I think the party ended about then.
Now fighting off the residual pain of being tossed on my couch, after the dead man’s march across the street, I hear Peachy and Deedee and Charlie and Dewayne and Ria, all debating what to do next. I don’t know why no one called 911. I guess it was because I had a big Chevy van all gassed up and sitting in the driveway.
So Charlie grabs my keys, Deedee the brown and white dog, jumps in the passenger seat, Ria, the Great Pumpkin, and the others, try to keep me from rolling around on the floor. Meanwhile, as we speed around corners and do quick stops and starts that toss me around like a rag doll, Deedee tries to tell Charlie the way she thinks is the best route to the hospital.
It’s a miracle, and a blessing, when we finally stop in the emergency area of the hospital. The nurses come out of the automatic doors toward us pushing a wheel chair. When we slide open the side door of the van, the Great pregnant Pumpkin steps out. The nurses recognize her from earlier prenatal checkups and wheel her away. She manages to explain to them that she’s okay, and the guy on the floor in the van needs help.
Here’s where the story gets a little confusing. I’m whisked away to a small area where my gurney is parked next to some gang member with stab wounds asking me uncomfortable questions about loyalty or something.
With it being nearly two in the morning by now, a doctor finally gets my leg in a cast and Deedee pushes me out to the waiting room where Peachy is waiting with the others. She’s pretty inebriated. As we all begin walking toward the exit, she darts into the Nurse’s Lounge and pukes all over the floor. We’re now moving at a much quicker pace as we head for the getaway van.
On the drive home I hear about the check-in issues. The admissions nurse had laryngitis. As she asked Peachy for my name and birthday, Peachy saw that she was whispering, and knowing it’s a hospital and two in the morning, begins to whisper back. The nurse informs her that she doesn’t have to whisper; at about the same time that our slurring wobbly Peachy realizes she can’t remember my birthday and leaning on the counter and raising one leg to keep from peeing her pants, sends all her friends around her, into hysterical laughter.
And so it goes for that Halloween Party at Gay and Daryl’s, back in 1980.

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