The Great Pumpkin Carving

I’m not the girly girl romantic type. As a matter a fact, I don’t think I’m girly at all. I can appreciate the sentiment behind a bouquet of flowers, but I’ve never demanded, begged or other wise hinted for anyone to send me any. I have a few treasured pieces of jewelry such as the one pair of earrings that I have worn since I was fifteen, but again I don’t get sparkles in my eyes as I pass by stores nor do I become envious of people dripping in ice. I just don’t care. It’s not my bag.

I’m not a big shopper. I don’t mind going to stores, but I never buy anything. I don’t wear makeup and I don’t keep up with any sort of fashion. Upon returning to work from maternity leave, one of the guys congratulated me on my “mom pants”. I knew he was being a little shit, but I thought he was insinuating that my pants looked like a sausage casing that I had been stuffed into. I wear I size six. Even if just after maternity leave I was bursting at my size six seems, nobody could honestly look at me and say I was fat, so I protested. “These are the same pants I’ve worn since high school.” He had to explain that “mom pants” had to do with the long pants zipper, not weight. Whatever, I don’t do fashion. I don’t like the show-off-your-belly pants, and I certainly wouldn’t couple the fuck-me-tattoo across the small of the back with the ass-crack-and-thong-display pants. I used to wear super short shorts in high school (as in wore it to school) and then wear a pullover top that was barely longer than my shorts. I was asked on a regular basis if I was wearing any pants underneath, and if I moved in a certain way the bottom of my bottom could be seen, so I’m not judging anyone’s fashion. I’m just sayin’ I had my own twisted sense of style.

Until I met Kurt I really didn’t care for kissing or cuddling. No, that isn’t a euphemism for something else. If I meant to say fucking, I would say FUCKING. MYGOD you really didn’t like kissing or cuddling? No, no I didn’t. And no, I’ve never been raped so spare me the wealth of Dr. Phil-isms and other such things that pass for psychology knowledge.

The first fall season Kurt and I were together, I went over to his apartment one night and he wanted to go buy pumpkins to carve into jack-o-lanterns. Really? Huh, ok. We walked across the street to the grocery store and picked out a couple of pumpkins. It was our eighth month together. My one girly trait is that I knew after four months that he was “the one”. I waited for him to indicate he felt the same because I knew if I said anything too soon I’d scare him off.

We took our pumpkins back to his kitchen and laid out newspaper for the ensuing mess (not that type of mess my twisted little monkeys). I had only carved a pumpkin once before so I didn’t really know what I was doing. Mr. engineering spreadsheet ruler and protractor fanatic went to town laying out his secret design. I followed suit and started with the typical triangle eyes. I turned my pumpkin around to face Kurt for design approval. “No,” he said, “we can’t show each other till weren’t done.” I turned my triangle eyed pumpkin head around again. I continued with my basic, very traditional toothy grinning pumpkin face and finished long before Kurt with all of his precise measurements. It was obvious that he was doing something much more elaborate than I had. I had no clue what type of decoration he was doing, but is was freehand, so sight unseen I was impressed. He finally finished his masterpiece and asked if I was ready to turn mine around. We turned our pumpkins around to show each other at the same time. He didn’t do a face at all! He wrote, “Kurt + Erica”. He didn’t actually tell me he loved me until after we’d been together for a year, but I knew.

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