When William is excited, he talks fast. When he’s VERY excited, his words run past you at a blinding clip. On this particular day, William was very, VERY excited and I desperately tried to follow what he was telling me. I picked out ‘man with a scar’, ‘scary’, and ‘spooky-eeky’.

“Spooky-Eeky?” I asked, mostly just to slow down his words. It worked. William stopped talking and simply said, “Yes.” His broad grin was delightful.

“What is ‘Spooky-Eeky’? I asked.

His words turned on once again, and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what he was trying to tell me. “Sorry, Mister Twister, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He dropped to all fours, with his fanny pointing to the ceiling. He began to turn his head from side to side very slowly. His face was frozen in a manic smile, his eyes as big as he could make them. He made not one peep.

Completely baffled, I said, “What are you doing?” and he explained to me that he was Spooky-Eeky. “Who took you to see that?” I asked. And the answer came: “Grandpa did.”

Now he had spent the day with Grandpa. In William’s world, there is nothing better than spending the day with Grandpa. Grandpa will hand over a hammer and let little boys pound things. Grandpa has a gazillion other tools that make lots of noise. Grandpa’s blue truck gives a higher vantage point from which to view of the world. Grandpa has friends with excavating equipment. Grandpa is always good for a chocolate milk when he stops to pick up a Pepsi for himself.

Yep, a day with grandpa is pretty exciting stuff. Grandpa’s got the fellow so well-trained that we can no longer pass the Lowes without an argument from the back seat. The list of what Grandpa does not do is really pretty short. Grandpa does not tolerate screaming temper tantrums and Grandpa does NOT take little boys to see things that could be described as ‘Spooky-Eeky’.

Yet there he was on all fours, his head moving slowly back and forth, his eyes bugging out of his head, and that frozen manic smile, not saying a word. The boy was starting to creep me out.

Tim was puttering around somewhere in the house, and so I called for him. He walked into the living room, and stared at the little fellow between us. His face bore the same look of befuddlement mine did. I explained “He says he’s Spooky-Eeky and he says that you took him to see him. He’s talking about ghosts and men with scars on their heads and I don’t know what all. It made quite an impression on him. Where the heck did you take him?”

“I don’t have a clue,” Tim said, watching him. “We were at the brick house, and the only place we went was Lowes and” Then his voice trailed off and he started laughing hard. He had figured it out.

In these modern times, stores start displaying their Halloween things in August. Grandpa and William had walked into the happiest place on earth (aka Lowes). There were light up, animated decorations. A witch stirred her cauldron and cackled, a skeleton danced in his cage. There was a dragon, and ghosts, and there was a small animated cat with a spooky arched back and (eek!) he turned his head from side to side displaying his glowing eyes and a manic feline smile. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which one captured William’s imagination.

Later, William and I visited our own attic, and back in a dark corner, we pulled out two large plastic Halloween decorations.

Using his flashlight, William studied the black cat on the pumpkin, and the three ghosts rising up from a tombstone that read ‘Happy Halloween’. Both of them were taller than he was. In the days when my kids were little, it was a pretty exciting day when the Halloween decorations got pulled out of the attic. Of course, animatronics were unheard of then, so I was not sure how excited William would get over the simple blown plastic light up decorations.

All these years later, they worked their magic yet again. “Grandma!” William breathed. “Can we take these downstairs?” He carried the cords, and I carried the decorations, and we set them up in the semidarkness of the library. Once they were plugged in, William clambered up on the sofa and sat there watching them happily.

Before long, he had rushed out to get his little pumpkin which he set on the table. He gathered up a handful of his little spidey friends and arranged them on the furniture. “It is a very scary house, innit?” he asked me. I agreed.

At bedtime, he begged to sleep downstairs in his scary house, and we gave in. Every time that I peeked in, one small boy’s smile gleamed back at me. I am not sure how long it actually took him to finally doze off.

William now has a fixation, and that fixation is Halloween. We found three books about Halloween which he begs to be read again and again. We have a CD of spooky sounds, and he’ll sit and listen to the sounds, inventing his own little stories about ghosts and witches and skeletons and ‘ombies.

Yesterday, he wanted to be a ghost for Halloween. Then he decided he wanted to be Darth Vader. Today he wants to be a mummy. He ate his lunch thoughtfully studying his hands. He was pretty sure that he was getting claws. We pointed out that his mama had just clipped his fingernails. He looked crushed.

It used to be that one month of Halloween was enough, but now that one day is being milked for all it’s worth. I am sure that it is because it is such a profitable holiday in the retail sector, just as Christmas is, but I’d rather imagine three year old CEOs meeting over cookies and milk while enthusiastically endorsing two months of Halloween and 3 months of Christmas.