The Halloween Trama of a Dark Jedi (Part I: Near Death and Destruction)

About six months ago during my exploits on eBay I discovered an item that would make Halloween my new favorite holiday of the year. Okay perhaps that is a slight over-statement... or perhaps it is an under-statement. But still, it would be really cool. For my birthday Shawn had bought me (god bless his heart) an FX lightsaber, the blue Anakin one from Episode III (and actually the same one that Luke gets from Obi-wan in the original). So I found the ultimate costume on eBay, the complete recreation of Anakin Skywalker's Jedi costume. So I followed a few different versions of it for a few months. About the month before Halloween I started bidding on a few different ones. The guy who makes him has his own small company who makes a variety of replica costumes ranging from Star Wars to Kill Bill. So after losing two separate auctions and running out of time with shipping time factored in, I contacted the maker outside of eBay and arranged to purchase one plus a black cloak and belt, a total of about $50 more (which normally are not included) for just ten dollars more then the "buy it now" price. Amazingly he accepted and the costume was on its way. I received the costume a week and a half later, plenty early for Halloween.

The next week our family went through what was perhaps the most frightening moment in our lives, which was followed by probably the worst week of school this year. My dad was painting the gable of our house--the part above our front porch. My sister was on the computer, my mom was rinsing a paintbrush, and I was upstairs in my room working on homework on an ordinary Sunday afternoon. This is when I heard a loud crash coming from outside, as if my dad had dropped the ladder while moving it. I went over to the window and looked out thinking he was on the South side still, he was not. Not a half second later my sister starts screaming from downstairs, "Dad Fell off the Ladder!!!" My mom, "what?" We all ran outside and my dad was lying on his back about 8 feet away from the porch after taking about 15 foot drop from the roof. Somehow the Ladder had slipped out from under him causing it to fall on the railing of the porch, thus catapulting him backwards while doing a back flip (or two, he wasn't sure) and landing on top of a small prickly bush in the flowerbed. His feet were about 6 inches from a steel railing that climbed the steep slope of our front yard, his torso was about a foot away from the cement walkway, and his head was about an inch and a half away from a large volcanic rock that my mom is so fond of collecting. Had he fallen anywhere but there he would most likely be dead or seriously injured. three passers-by that saw the catipultaion ran over to see if my dad was okay, he was conscious and fully aware, but could not move; he instructed us to get a wet cloth. We called an ambulance, and the firemen loaded him onto a stretcher and carried him down the 24 steps to the street. I rode along with him in the Ambulance to the hospital and my mom and sister followed. We ended up being there for about 4 to 5 hours, until he could get checked out, which eventually he never did, and just got up and left because he had been waiting for 45 minutes just for the paperwork. Now he is mostly recovered and very lucky to be alive.

That week of school sucked ass. I had three tests on Wednesday; Microbiology, Anatomy Lab, and Statistics. I was finally able to arrange to take the Anatomy Lab test (all the muscles in the body) on Thursday, but by that time it was too late. I got a B on the Stats test and failed the other two...damn it. So I just kept going day by day. My cousin was pulled out of his private school which was difficult for him with his Autism and placed in the local public school alongside his twin brother who is also autistic. My grandfather continued down the destructive path of dementia, and nothing seemed to go right for a while. Halloween was starting to look better and better, at least I had something to look forward to.

"these procedures would be so much easier if you did them on healthy people" -House