I have a very low-stakes problem, but it’s still definitely a problem: I can’t stop my child from posing the skeleton decorating our lawn for Halloween in a way that looks like a lewd joke. I just don’t know how to tell her to knock it off without explaining that the way she’s got it makes it look like the skelly is jerking off.
It all started when she began pleading for outdoor Halloween decorations. Our town loves Halloween, and she had a big case of FOMO. She complained that “everybody” and “all her friends” had outdoor decorations and we didn’t. So I told her we could buy one skeleton — not a giant one, either — and it had to be reasonably priced.
So she and my husband went shopping and came home with a life-size skeleton with glowing red eyes. They also bought him a pair of sunglasses and super-glued them on, so that in the dark he looks like the Terminator. But he’s relaxing in a plastic Adirondack chair, so he’s got a bit of Parrothead energy, too.
It turned into a fun project for my daughter, who took over the rest of the Halloween decorations, too, dragging out the plastic bins and distributing lights and stick-on bats around the house. She gave the skeleton a ceramic Jack-O-Lantern she found in our stash of decor. Clearly she was having the time of her life, decorating according to her exact vision, and so I let her run wild. In true eldest/only daughter type-A fashion, she loves nothing more than to create a plan and execute the plan to her exact specifications, and that’s a good useful quality in life that I generally try to encourage. The problem came when we added a small grocery store pumpkin into the mix — one with a curved, four-inch stem — and she decided that the skeleton needed the pumpkin. You see where this is going.
One afternoon, I got home from running some errands and noticed that the pumpkin was nestled between the skeleton’s legs, with his bony hand resting gently on top. You know, like you might sit holding a decorative gourd for a posed picture at JCPenny Portraits back in the day. The problem is that when you have a stem-on pumpkin and rest it gently in the crotch of a skeleton with a hand sitting on top, it looks like the skeleton is pleasuring itself. (She is definitely too young for it to be a deliberate prank.) And there’s just no way to position the stem so it doesn’t look lewd.
I laughed and cringed and moved the pumpkin to the skeleton’s side and thought no more of it… until a recent playdate. My kid wanted to give her friend the grand tour of our skeleton on the way out. But she was distressed! Somebody had moved the pumpkin to the wrong place. She moved it back. I did not say anything, hoping that nobody would notice and that I just have a dirty mind and nobody else on our block does.
Then, the following morning, my husband texted me: “I think the local teens got to Mr. Skeleton.” I pictured pumpkin guts slung over the place. Wrong! “When I took the trash out this morning, the stem of his pumpkin had been relegated to a very suggestive position.” At which point, I had to explain it was the completely unintentional work of our child.
So now I have three options: 1. Keep moving the pumpkin every time she moves it back, without saying anything, engaging in a wordless comedy of errors. 2. Figure out some way to explain to her that it’s in the wrong place, without actually explaining it, setting off a fight, or steamrolling her creativity. (She is just so proud of that skeleton.) 3. Let the neighbors think we’ve deliberately decorated our yard with a skeleton with no fear of death or public indecency charges.
I honestly cannot decide what — if anything — I’m supposed to do here. Maybe I just assume nobody else will notice it, or wait and see if any of our neighbors says anything. Maybe I brazen it out. Maybe I say it’s fine if everybody thinks we’re the jerk-off-skeleton family. At least it’s a conversation starter.
