one night my roommate and i were on one of our many late night trips to food4less. it was just before halloween and like most other stores, there was a huge pile of pumpkins under the ugly fluorescent lights. as we left i commented on how easy it seemed it would be to steal one of these pumpkins. something posessed me and as we walked by, i just kind of grabbed one.
i'm not sure how it happened, really. but it was the perfect size and it was like maybe we were meant to be together. i bestowed upon this beautiful pumpkin the name "pumpkin joe" and vowed to make it the best jack-o-lantern ever.
unfortunately, my mother had never allowed me to carve a pumpkin. she's an art teacher and somewhat anal about things and she wanted her jack-o-lanterns to be perfect. of course she used the "i don't want you to cut yourself" excuse. in any case, i had never carved a pumpkin. but i was determined to do it right. and so after hours of designing his face and transferring that into the hard rind of pumpkin joe, jack-o-lantern joe was born on the thirtieth day of october, 1998.

here he is. my beautiful, beautiful jack-o-lantern joe. now . . . i'm not saying he's the most beautiful jack-o-lantern ever created, but i was pretty proud of myself. we enjoyed how hilariously wasted he looked and on halloween had a lit cigarette hanging out of his mouth. which was funny until the rain put out the cigarette.
a couple of days of recovery later, we noticed that jack-o-lantern joe looked a little funny. in fact, it seemed jack-o-lantern had had an exciting halloween, also. it appeared he had contracted herpes.

yeah . . . i know . . . scary. you cant really see it but there was some sort of white fungus all around his mouth and he was all saggy. so of course we were worried but really . . . what can you do? and so we watched jack-o-lantern joe's descent into hell. we couldn't touch him. it was really scary to do so. so instead he just rotted on the corner of our balcony. one night, as my friends proceeded to get impaired, i sat outside and lit a doritos bag on fire and placed it inside jack-o-lantern joe. i began screaming for hel and as my friends poured outside, they all stopped. i started screaming about how jack-o-lantern joe had spontaneously combusted. i'm not sure if i shouldadmit that i hang out with people like this, but they believed it. months later, i finally filled them in.

here he is in all his burning glory.
after that, jack-o-lantern joe just got scarier and scarier. as you can see in these last two pictures. eventually, i got up enough courage to pick him up and salute him as he dropped three stories into the bushes below.

pumpkin/jack-o-lantern joe, whereever you are, thank you for being the best pumpkin a girl ever stole.
i miss you.
i love you.

R.I.P.