I Know Where You Ran Last Summer

Dear City of Weston:

I realize times are tight and the “Halloween decorations” line in the city budget probably got slashed, but I think we’re all OK without the paper orange pumpkins. Your creative alternative of removing the light bulbs in most of the streetlamps, in an attempt to “spook-ify” the streets for anyone who might be on them before dawn, might have been taking the scary Halloween spirit just a little too far.

Though I must say, if scary was what you were going for, you hit a home run.

This morning, I was running in almost complete darkness as the deceased Michael Hutchence of ‘80s band INXS fame cackled “The Devil Inside” on my iPod, when I collided mouth-first with a giant spider web. And I screamed. A long, shrill, harrowing scream that surely frightened the other people out on the trails. (There you go, Weston: free Halloween sound effects.)

Picking the spindly strings out of my mouth, I began to wonder of the direction of my life had been taken over by some Alfred Hitchcock wanna-be.

This wasn’t the first time this week I felt this way. In fact on Sunday, during my long run, I realized I could very well be smack in the middle of a classic Halloween slasher flick. It was just me and my beautiful Team in Training running mentor, our long dark ponytails blowing in the wind. So there we were, two young(ish) women stranded alone in pitch blackness, with just small red blinking lights stuck onto our clothes for vision. It was a good two mile stretch on Bonaventure, between Royal Palm and South Post, without a single functioning street lamp. As we ran past dead animals (is there anything more chilling than tripping over a dead possum?) with spider webs caught in our hair, the timing was perfect for some bloodshot-eyed zombie to come out from the middle of nowhere and suck our blood, dismember us or do whatever else the scary bad guys do in these movies. (I’ve never actually seen one of these gory scenes; this is usually the part when I hide my face in my hands or decide I really need to leave the theater and use the bathroom.)

If you, too, would like to be able to come up with plots to trashy horror “B” movies, there’s nothing like being alone with your thoughts for a good few hours to get the creative juices flowing. Or the blood flowing, depending on how you look at it.

I’m not holding my breath for the City of Weston to fix the streetlamp problem. I actually called them, twice, and they said it was the power company’s fault, but Florida Light and Power said it was Weston’s fault, so I don’t see this issue being resolved any time soon.

I do see Daylights Savings on the horizon, though—so my long run this Saturday, which is Halloween, might be my last scary run…till next fall.

Happy Halloween.