The Exhausted Dad: Gourd season parental bonding
Stores run out of pumpkins, apparently.
I’ve encountered hundreds of pumpkins over the past several weeks. Every time I saw a giant pile of them at the grocery store, I thought to myself, “I should buy pumpkins now.”
Every year, Team Wilson paints pumpkins for Halloween. We don’t carve them because the entire family has various sensory processing issues. A couple of my kids can’t handle the texture of the insides, while a couple others (and I) really hate when the house smells like pumpkins without the “spice.”
Plus I love painting a Ninja Turtle on my pumpkin every year. I can’t carve a pumpkin to make it look like Raphael with the red bandana. It’s a deal breaker for me.
Even after thinking I should’ve bought pumpkins at the store at least a dozen times, I never did. While we typically go to a pumpkin patch to retrieve our seasonal gourds, time escaped us this October with various kid activities and responsibilities stacking on top of each other.
So, on Oct. 26, I finally decided to buy some store pumpkins. I took my 13-year-old daughter to help make selections, rather than taking all four kids to argue over what might be limited options in terms of size and shape.
I knew we were late to the pumpkin-buying party, but I didn’t think it would be so dire.
Every store we visited had small (and expensive) “pie” pumpkins. These don’t provide enough surface area for proper Ninja Turtle painting. Plus, on Oct. 26, there’s no possible way I have time to make a pumpkin pie from scratch. Actually, I’ll never make a pumpkin pie from scratch. I let professional piemakers handle my seasonal baked goods!
The first grocery store had plenty of regular pumpkins … that also happened to be gigantic, Roald Dahl-sized monstrosities. A few of them I could barely lift on my own. At $.49 per pound, I’m pretty sure a single pumpkin was going to cost me approximately $800, so my daughter and I decided to try another store.
Store No. 2 also touted pumpkins for $.49 per pound. All they had were giant pumpkins for billionaires and smashed up/moldy regular-sized ones. I know people aren’t eating these pumpkins, but I don’t think the grocery store should be selling pumpkins infected with the black plague.
Finally, we resorted to a stop at Walmart, which had plenty of little pumpkins, a good selection of white pumpkins (perfect for paining a green Ninja Turtle) and an extremely limited supply of giant pumpkins. These, at least, were priced $4.50 per pumpkin, so as long as my daughter and I could muscle these monsters into the car, we’d have enough remaining cash to snag a celebratory pumpkin spice latte.
However, two other procrastinating families also happened to be there. We were friendly with each other, but we also had a few awkward double claims to the few remaining regular-shaped pumpkins. The other families had little kids with them though, and I just had a 13-year-old with me, so we lost the cute kid battle over the best of the best. We got some decent (and giant) pumpkins, but anybody looking 30 minutes later would only find empty bins.
The lesson here: Don’t wait until Oct. 26 to buy your pumpkins. On a positive note, my “Hamilton”-obsessed 13-year-old and I had plenty of driving time to listen to the entirety of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Warriors” concept album. Maybe I’ll paint a “Warriors”-themed pumpkin this year.
Nah, it’s gonna be a Ninja Turtle.
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Tyler Wilson is a freelance writer, full-time student and parent to four kids, ages 7-13. He is tired. He can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com.
