Halloween Perm

Well, turn the lantern off for another year. Halloween has come and gone. We moved in to a dud neighborhood for kids a couple years ago. Last night was the sick realization, again. We had three, count them, three groups of kids. Now we have a bowl of candy that will eventually find its way in to my neck.

I seem to be nursing some sort of stomach funk from some soup I ate the other day. Not a good feeling. I hate that. Not to mention, everywhere you go there is someone hacking and coughing, sliming their way through the day. Most stomach funk is delivered hand to mouth, so who knows what I got myself in to? Then there are the kids at Halloween, all 12 of them, what kind of schmeg do they bring up to the front door? I dressed up in a HASMAT costume, for them.

A couple of months ago, a school moved in down below my office at the barn, about 100 or so kids of all ages. I wonder what the statistics look like down there? What illnesses of my own can I attribute to their being there? Schools, senior communities, hospitals, they are breeding grounds for stuff like that. But the kids, actually, it is kind of nice having them around. Something about the sound of kids playing outside an office window makes for a pleasant environment. Sometimes you can hear them singing directly beneath our office. I stomp my foot really hard on the floor, kind of like a bass drum, just to see what happens.

Speaking of the office, last week I was sitting, working, screaming in to the phone as I normally do. When all of the sudden a burning smell permeates the room and pretty much the entire upstairs of the building. I get up, go running to our accounting office to tell everyone to "Get out!", "Get the hell out of here!". Why? Because we work in a barn made of wood, and that is a bit of a danger in my world. To jump out my window would take some effort, I was wanting to get a jump on the flames, kind of like Castanza at the birthday party. Classic.

Davida, our accountant, doesn't even flinch. Without looking up from her journal entries she points next door and matter-of-factly says, "perm". It was the hair studio next door.

I peer in through the window to find out what was going on, who was on fire, what needed to be done to save the kids downstairs. Because that is what it smells like, burned human being, a hair fire. I see a 75 year old woman's head wrapped in foil, sitting, reading a magazine with a busy cosmo working her way around her with a bucket of chemical. I couldn't believe the odor. The entire barn was consumed in the smell of baked dead platinum protein. I was pissed and yelled at Davida to get the....place under control.

I go running back in to my office where Kevin perches on his computer for most the day, cranking out contracts, letters and opinion on stuff. I tell him what the hell is going on and he says: "You know, that is illegal, it is supposed to be vented". Well, now I am hot. My clothes smell like hell, and I have work to do. I glance through the rest of the offices, other tenants, working diligently at their desks. I wonder if they were as concerned as I was. I made a deal out of it. Proclaimed loudly that "Perms should only be done on weekends!". When nobody is at their desks.

Who the hell gets perms? HASMAT Halloween.