SUPPLIES!

(If you understand the title reference, you’re probably a kindred spirit of Mr. Chandler’s… Also, you’re probably not one of my students.)

This is one of the most random things that has ever happened to me. At the end of October, I was with Mr. Chandler and my dear friend Army Girl walking around the picturesque main street of a small town. As we walked along the last block and the daylight waned, we noticed three people jogging toward us. They were dressed as ninjas in black leggings, tunics, sashes, hoods, and partial facemasks. Each ninja carried a substantial branch of bamboo. This group of street ninjas was comprised of a tall young man and two girls, one wearing glasses with red frames. They appeared to be around 20 years old. They jogged up to us and stopped, holding their bamboo in front of their faces and peering at us through the leaves. We stopped and stared at them. They stared at us. Even Army Girl, who normally laughs at everything, paused mid-laugh to stare. Then, after what seemed like an eternity, the shortest female ninja said, “Raaahhh…” in a strange part-growl, part-battle-cry sort of noise, and the street ninjas ran off into the night, jumping and yelling and brandishing their bamboo. We watched them run off, and then turned to stare at each other incredulously. Then, of course, we all started laughing… because, really, what else can you do when you’ve been accosted by random street ninjas?

The Great Pumpkin

Mr. Chandler bought a white pumpkin. I have no idea what makes white pumpkins white, but this pumpkin is really, really white. There has to be a variety of pumpkin that comes out white as a rule, but I’ve never heard of it. I’ve only had one other experience with an albino vegetable. I remember digging in the rose garden once when I was in middle school and finding what looked like a white carrot. It was rather thick for a carrot and tasted a little off… but at least my mother let us cut into it and taste it to find out. This September, I actually discovered a white “carrot” at my favorite produce store, and they called it by some other name – a name that made me think the white carrot was not actually a white carrot after all.

I’ve always liked pumpkins. When I was in elementary school, my brother and I had a strange accident with a pumpkin. There was a flowerbed next to our front porch and sidewalk at our house in Gresham, and one year, around Halloween, my brother kicked over a pumpkin that still had seeds inside it. The pumpkin and the seeds spilled into the flowerbed. The following year, our flowerbed was full of pumpkin vines. The vines yielded at least two full-sized pumpkins, which we made good use of for Halloween – free carving pumpkins!

This year, we have a small pumpkin – purely because it was too adorable to resist when we were at the produce store. It even has the tiny little curly vines attached to its stem. We also bought a small squash that looks like a mini-pumpkin, and now we have the albino pumpkin as well. Mr. Chandler has been calling it a ghost pumpkin, which might be more appropriate for Halloween. Our kitchen table looks like a pumpkin patch for mutant midget pumpkins.