Never mind the ghosts and ghouls, the real horrors Ricky faces in the Hallowe’en season are the cute couples’ activities his girlfriend Baby subjects him to.
Podcast Script (not including ad-libs):
Ah, spooky season… it can be fun with the drinkin’ and the pilfering the peanut butter cups from Mama Rat’s trick or treat stash for the neighborhood kids and all that, but sometimes it really sucks. Like this one time last year when I got roped into Baby’s idea of a fun spooky time… man, that was a real nightmare.
So it was coming up to Halloween and Baby was goin’ on and on about this awesome Big Fat Horror Shop haunted house thing they do at the local fairground… which is to say, dropping hints that I was to take her to it on Saturday date night.
And I was tryin’ to avoid that. Not ‘cause I was scared or nothin’, cause I ain’t scared of nothin’, but it’s just such a dumb idea, like, you pay all this money to go, and you gotta fight for parking and they make you park on the hayfield and half the time it’s pouring rain so it’s all mucky. And my car’s just a crappy old Volkswagen Rabbit from 1983 so it ain’t nothin’ to write home about, but it gets the job done and I do try to keep it as nice as I can, so I hate when it gets muddy. Especially when the mud gets into the rust spots, y’know; those are kinda hard to hose out, and I just washed the damned thing the day before so it would be presentable on date night. And now we were gonna have to go and park in the muck and I was gonna have to hear Baby bitchin’ about getting her shoes all muddy even though this was her date idea, not mine.
And that’s just the start of it, cause then once you’re parked and you trudge through the mud to the fairgrounds hall, you gotta put up with dorks from the local community college theatre program jumping out at you in the dark and you’re supposed to act scared of the ketchup they use for fake blood and all and man, it’s so lame. Not to mention that by the time you pay for the two tickets and the concession stand and all that, ya coulda just stayed home watching pirate movies when Mama Rat was out at bingo and ordered a large pizza with extra cheese and gotten a 40 ouncer of Fireball and gotten wasted and maybe even gotten lucky.
But no dice ‘cause Baby wanted to go and take selfies and I ran out of “working late” excuses ‘cause Jeff was away on some meditation retreat thing and Big Mike was down in LA working on Guns N Roses’s bassist’s latest side project album and so on Saturday night I picked up Baby at 6 o’clock.
Baby’s mama was away at a ladies’ church club whatever meeting, but her daddy Mr. Rattsen was there to growl at me. And as usual, her old man gave me the same ol’ lecture about bringing his daughter home by midnight or else… while polishing his hunting rifles, as he always does.
Man, I’m tellin’ ya: them rifles get more polish than use. I mean, I never heard of him actually going hunting or nothin’, and my uncle Barney is all about the hunting and I swear he knows every hunter in Ratland and I asked him one time and he ain’t never heard of Mr. Rattsen going hunting neither.
Barney did say that maybe Mr. Rattsen’s one of them rich dudes who only goes trophy hunting on safari in Africa, but then he said those dudes usually have loads of taxidermy and antlers on their walls and I ain’t seen none of that at the Rattsen house… anyway, your guess is as good as mine but the point is Mr. Rattsen was shining up his guns real good.
I’m tellin’ ya, man: it’s all so stupid. Have her home by midnight… what is this? Sixth grade?
Baby’s 19 now. And I might be 22 1/2 but we’ve known each other since we were in the same eighth grade algebra class (shut up, so what if I got held back a grade or two and had to repeat algebra a couple more times? Algebra is stupid, no one ever actually uses that stuff.)
Point is, you’d think Mr. Rattsen woulda chilled out by now. And I take real good care of Baby; ain’t nothin’ bad ever happened on one of our date nights, but as stupid as Mr. Rattsen’s curfews are, I do abide by ‘em and I do have her home by midnight every time.
Anyway, so Baby gets in the car and we went for cheeseburgers first thing—inside the actual McRat Burger restaurant, not just through the drive-thru, ‘cause we were being all fancy and all. And I tried to sell her on skipping the haunted thingy and just going parking down by the river.
“No, Ricky! Ugh! I already told all my friends we’re going and I’m posting pics on Instarat tonight!”
Ugh… fine. “OK, Baby, then I guess we gotta.”
Baby giggled. “You’re not scared, are ya, Ricky?”
“Naw, Baby. I ain’t scared of nothin’.”
“We’re gonna get so many good selfies tonight!”
“Sure thing, Baby.”
Sigh… so, off we went to the stupid fairgrounds to check out the stupid haunted house thingy but first we had to wade through the stupid corn maze outside (after the stupid muddy hayfield “parking lot”) and then the stupid “Spooky Pumpkin Patch” so Baby could take, like, 500 selfies of us in each one to prove to her stupid cosmetology school classmates that she does indeed have a boyfriend who takes her to stupid stuff like that when she makes me.
And then finally it was time to line up in front of the big hall/gymnasium thing where they usually have pickleball tournaments and agriculture trade shows etc. and where they show off all the grandmas’ knitting during the fall fair, but, of course, now the whole thing is draped with black curtains and those fake cobwebs. And if that wasn’t cringeworthy enough, one of the community college theatre nerds was stationed at the front gate, all dressed up like Dracula.
He waved his stupid polyester cape around, saying “I vant to suck your blood!”
Baby giggled and grabbed me in to take a selfie with fake Dracula. Something seemed familiar about him… I squinted my eyes and studied his face under all that stupid white makeup and… wait a minute.
“Paulie? That you?”
Paulie hissed at me “shut the Hell up, Rateriff! I gotta stay in character!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah… how’s the Hollywood thing working out?”
“I got acting gigs. You ain’t no rock star.”
“I don’t wanna be a rock star. I wanna be in the recording studio and I do work at Big Mike’s studio.”
“Yeah, cleaning toilets and fetching pizza.”
“Why you son of a—”
Things mighta come to blows but I guess Baby remembered all the bad blood between me and Paulie from high school where he dumped my sister Becky at the prom and knocked up her best friend all in the same night, so she grabbed my wrist and yanked me into the darkness.
Or maybe it was just that she had more selfies to take before midnight and time was a-wastin.’
So we went through the stupid maze they set up inside with hanging black tarps and every time one of Paulie’s dumbass theatre pals jumped out to try and spook us, Baby giggled and grabbed them for a selfie. It was pretty lame, though I guess the bit in the middle where they had a fake alien autopsy tableau thingy was kinda OK… in a fourth grade art class project kinda way.
The only part that kinda got to me a bit was at the end where there was this giant cat animatronic puppet thing that swipes at ya, but I wasn’t actually scared of it, no matter what Baby said.
“Oh c’mon, Ricky. You almost peed your pants!”
“I did not! And that was cause of the booze anyway: I told you back in the maze I needed to take a leak and you insisted I shouldn’t just do it in the corner!”
“You squeaked real loud! You were freaked out!”
“No! It just kinda startled me is all.”
“Nuh uh! You were scared!”
“I ain’t scared of nothin’! I just… wasn’t quite expecting the giant cat paw to move quite that exact way.”
Baby giggled. “You dudes never wanna admit it.”
“I’m tellin’ ya: I wasn’t scared of it. Now you stop your nonsense, Baby; it’s 10:30 and we can get almost an hour of river parking time before I gotta have you home.”
Anyway, so we headed to the river and that ain’t none of no one’s business. Then I dropped Baby off at 11:56pm, same as always. Pretty sure her daddy was disappointed that I wasn’t late ‘cause his shotguns still ain’t got no use.
But that “spooky Saturday” nonsense wasn’t even the worst of it. Fast forward to Sunday night when, after a long day of being nagged by Mama Rat to help clean and organize the attic, I got a call from Baby. Sadly, she was not calling to tell me she’d snuck out of the house and could meet me down by the river.
“Ricky, I need you to come with me to cosmetology school tomorrow.”
“Huh? You need a ride? What’s wrong with your car? Maybe my cousin Darren can fix it.”
“My car’s fine. I need a guinea pig.”
Oh Lordy… I’ve been dreading this day. I mean, I told Baby things ain’t like back in the ‘80s when a dude could show up to a recording studio in eyeliner and mascara and lip gloss and he wouldn’t get laughed at so long as he had a record deal. But no matter how many times I said it, she insisted someday she was gonna need me to show up and let her put make-up on me… bad enough there was that one day when they were learning about men’s skincare but at least none of them goops she put on my face were, like, visible or nothin’ so I could still go to work afterwards, just smelled kinda funny is all.
But Baby insisted I had to go with her and so there I was on her doorstep at 7:45 am, practically in the middle of the night by rock n’ roll standards.
And then, y’know, Mr. Rattsen was just opening the front door on his way out to go work at his high-powered corporate executive job, all in his suit and tie and whatnot. I think he was a bit surprised to see me in daylight hours, but he was even more surprised when I said to him, “Good morning sir, you can just shoot me right now.”
“What did you do this time?”
“Nothin’, sir. But your daughter done told me I have to let her drag me to her cosmetology school so she can put make-up on me. And then I gotta go to work afterwards and all the guys gonna laugh at me.”
Well, Mr. Rattsen started laughing himself and he said he wasn’t gonna shoot me ‘cause he figured I deserved to suffer the humiliations of cosmetology school and he wasn’t gonna let me off so easily. Then he got in his Bentley and drove off cackling like a mad scientist.
And, finally, Baby came out, late as always. Usually I get annoyed when she’s running behind and I gotta wait, but this day I was hoping she’d be so late we’d miss cosmetology school entirely… but that wasn’t to be as she came downstairs giggling and lugging, like, 15 giant bags of stuff for school, so I drove her there in solemn silence and trudged along behind her into the very very pink salon-school.
Now, Baby wouldn’t tell me what she was gonna do to me, which was worrying. And I asked her, “But you’re gonna wash all this shit off my face before I go to work, right?”
She just giggled. “No! Don’t be ridiculous!”
So that was even more worrying.
We got inside and I wasn’t the only sad, browbeaten boyfriend at the school that morning. A bunch of us sat gravely looking all miserable while our girlfriends listened to their teacher blather on about special effects make-up and props and whatnot, and we cosmetology lab rats then all dutifully sat in our chairs and allowed our women to inflict the indignities of the morning on us.
And we weren’t even allowed to look in the mirrors to see how stupid we were being made to look.
As it turned out, I got off lucky, ‘cause Baby just wanted to put a bunch of fake blood all over me and some waxy bits to make, like, swollen fake gash wounds in my face and then she made me wear a headband with a little fake axe on it, stuck right there in the middle of my head.
Then me and the other guys all had to sit there waiting while the teacher waddled around to grade all the different boyfriends.
“Very good, Carol, your man really does look like a clown. You get an A…. Beth, if you’re trying to make him look like a big baby you really should use more concealer around his crow’s feet and use way more blush to make him more pink. B minus… Oh, wow, Baby, you really went all out with the whole axe murder thing! A plus.”
Baby squeaked in delight and then insisted on taking, like, 10,000 photos and selfies.
“I’m gonna print this one out and frame it and give it to Daddy for his birthday next week – he always says he’d love to bury the hatchet in your head, Ricky; he’s gonna be so happy to see this!”
“Uh huh… um, Baby? Can I go now?”
Well, she wouldn’t let me go yet because while make-up class was over for the day, nails class was just beginning and Baby had notions of continuing the guinea piggery and painting my claws instead of the plastic fake nails they usually have for class.
“Do I have to?”
“Yes! Oh my God, Ricky, it’ll be fun!”
“The studio guys’ll make fun of me.”
“I don’t care, it’s Halloween!”
“OK, but you’re just gonna, like, do them black, right?”
“No! I wanna try out these cute pink sparkle ghost decals I got on eBay! And I wanna practice drawing spider webs – look I have this neon glitter orange polish for that!”
“Gah!”
So I sat there wishing I had a real hatchet buried in my brain while Baby insisted on giving me the full manicure treatment and I looked helplessly at the nails teacher, who rather unhelpfully (to me, at least) merely said, “Baby, don’t forget: you have to push his cuticles back or else the polish won’t stick right.”
Sigh… man, sometimes I wish Baby had become, like, a financial adviser student instead of a cosmetology student; at least then if she used me as a guinea pig I might, like, benefit instead of getting made fun of… anyway, finally nails class was over. And since the afternoon class was gonna be hair class—whereupon they were gonna be learning how to do spiral perms on long hair, and my hair is too short and spiky for me to be of any use as a hair class guinea pig—and because Baby’s mama was gonna pick her up after school, Baby duly gave me permission to escape and I could jet.
Of course, by this time I was running late so I didn’t have time to ditch the makeup or the nail polish on the way to work. And I was real worried what the guys would say when I got there but all that happened was Big Mike yelled at me for being late.
“I don’t care that you got attacked by an axe murderer, boy, that’s no excuse for forgetting to bring me my Ratbucks on the way here! Go on, git! And fetch me a triple cheeseburger from McRat’s while you’re at it! Extra pickles!!!”
Jeff then called out from the live room “I want a Ratbucks and triple cheeseburger, too! And stop by the gear store and fetch a new 30 foot speaker cable on the way!”
So I spent all Halloween day and night last year running errands with sparkly spider and ghost claws and a fake hatchet in my head. But hey, at least the baristas at Ratbucks gave me a free cookie for showing up in costume and the dude at the liquor store gave me some peanut M&Ms for the same reason.
And the dude at the gear store didn’t have any candy or cookies for me, but he patted me on the shoulder and said, “I been there, son. My wife went to cosmetology school, too, but she eventually gave it up to become a paralegal and she don’t try to paint my claws no more.”
So there’s that. Maybe there’s hope after all… still woulda been nice if he coulda given me a cookie as well, though.
Y’know, I think Baby’s plenty smart enough to be a paralegal… whatever the Hell that is… but the important thing is, it sounds like it’s the sorta thing where me, as her boyfriend, won’t have to worry about glitter or makeup no more and I think that’s the important thing.
Anyway, so that’s what happened to me last Halloween. So far this Halloween doesn’t seem to be a day Baby’s gonna drag me into cosmetology school, but Mama Rat said she wants me to take my nephew Marvin trick or treating. Dunno why Becky and her husband Jordan can’t take him out with his sisters, but I guess it is true that Marvin’s a handful and if Jordan’s staying home to dole out candy there, Becky’s gonna be busy with the sisters.
I figure I’ll take Marvin trick or treating around Baby’s neighborhood. Them rich folks have the good candy. Sometimes full-size bars even. Hopefully lots of peanut butter cups too, but if I’m gonna steal ‘em from Marvin’s candy sack, I’ll have to be sneaky about it ‘cause if he catches me he’s gonna bite me.
Now, I do believe Marvin said he wants to be SpiderRat, which is cool and all, but I was hoping to convince him it would be cool if he was an escaped convict and I was the jailer, if for no other reason than I could handcuff the little bugger and keep him on a leash and that would somewhat lessen the chances of him misbehaving or deciding to run around naked and peeing on old ladies’ doorsteps if they gave him candy he doesn’t like and whatnot, but… SpiderRat it is.
God help me.
(Of course, if he’s really misbehaving, I’ll just take him to the studio and let him loose in Big Mike’s office and pretend like I had no idea my innocent little nephew Marvin could be so bad. Heh heh… “psst… Uncle Ricky gonna let you have one of your peanut butter cups if SpiderRat can climb up the wall and go pee on Big Mike’s Mariah Carey gold record, OK? But don’t you tell nobody I said that… Why, I have no idea what got into Marvin, boss; he ain’t usually like this… well, y’know how kids are on Halloween… anyway, I gotta take him home to his Mama, you get Intern Dave right on that clean-up…”)
Links
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But also on YouTube: Ricky B. Rat on YouTube
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