Every Day is an Atheist Holiday!

Halloween. The next year, my daughter, Mox, wanted to be a princess. I was on some stupid anti- commercialization-of-Halloween jag (“Let’s put the Christ back in Halloween?” What was I thinking?) and my son, Zz, and I agreed we would be simple ghosts. We would just wear sheets. I had some sort of Peanuts cartoon image in mind—just take a sheet, cut holes in it for the eyes and you had a ghost outfit. Because I’m a rich asshole, I didn’t even take old sheets. I bought a new little and a big sheet, and I made us matching Halloween costumes. Even though it was just cutting four holes in two sheets I was really proud. This was going to be a real old-fashioned homemade Halloween for my son and me. I was excited about going trick-or-treating and matching my little boy.

At this time, I had affected the wearing of a kind of straw fedora. In my head, I looked like Sinatra; in the mirror I looked like Junior Samples from Hee Haw. (Don’t you fucking knock Hee Haw. I know for a fact Bob Dylan watched it, and those Hee Haw Honeys had some serious hayracks.) What could be better? I’d just cut holes in a sheet for my eyes, put on my straw fedora, and we’d be handmade ghosts. None of this costume shop commercial jive.

That Halloween morning, I got up stupid early. When you get off work at about midnight, drive home, unwind, read a bit in the bathtub and doze off gently at about four a.m., that seven-thirty a.m. alarm comes quicker than a nineteen-year-old at his first fetish ball. I was tired, but I had promised I would go to the kids’ school and read a Halloween story to my daughter’s class. I was to be the “Mystery Reader.” The idea was that a student’s mom or dad would go in costume and read a story, and then there would be the joyous revelation that the Mystery Reader was one of their parents. I was very excited. I was sure my distinctive and street-damaged carny voice would give me away, and I anticipated watching Mox figure it out through the eyeholes of my sheet.

My children go to a bullshit fancy-ass MILF/DILF uniform private school, and I arrived at the desk. “I’m the Mystery Reader today.” I was wearing my straw hat, but no costume.

“That’s great—do you have a mask?”

“Nope, I have better than that.” I was proud. “I made my own costume, and I made one for my son too.” I indicated the sheet in my hand.

“Okay, well, put it on before you go into the class. You don’t want your little girl to recognize you.”

I took off my hat, put the sheet over my head, lined up my eyeholes, and put my hat back on. The idea of a ghost wearing a Sinatra hat thrilled me. I was a ghost with a hat. Work boots, jeans, a sheet and a straw hat. I was ready to go.

The receptionist gasped. She was horrified. I was going to say, Hey, it’s not really a ghost. It’s just me, Moxie’s dad! But her reaction wasn’t right. She wasn’t afraid of a ghost. And it wasn’t fear she was feeling; it was shock and disgust. She hated my ghost costume: what was up?

Behind the receptionist’s desk was a reflective window. Through the sheet’s eyeholes, I could see myself in costume. I had shown up at my child’s school dressed as a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Granted, my sheet didn’t have the perfectly hateful pointy pope top, but… I was wearing my hat. My straw hat, so there could have been a point there.

I pulled the sheet off. I had no idea what to say. Just then, my daughter’s teacher came out, dressed as a cute little bumblebee. She hadn’t chosen any international symbols of hate for her Halloween costume. She was not a bee with a swastika on her chest. The sheet was off by the time she saw me, so she could tell that I was Penn, not a KKK member. The cute bee beckoned me, “You all set? The children are very excited for their Mystery Reader. Mox has no idea it’s you. This is going to be great. Do you have your costume?”

“Yes, I’m gonna be a ghost. I’m a ghost. It’s a sheet with eyes cut out, I’m a ghost.”

“Great. C’mon.”

My blood ran cold. I was so embarrassed and guilty. I didn’t know what to do. “But… When a guy my size puts on a sheet… I don’t look only like a ghost… It’s a sheet, I look kind of like… Well, I’m wearing a sheet.”

“You’ll be fine, the children are excited.” She didn’t get it.

“I look kind of, you know, KKK.”

“What do you mean?”

I put on my sheet and hat and looked out the eyeholes.

“Oh my god!” She covered her mouth. The teachers at this fancy-ass school are not supposed to use the lord’s name in vain, even though that’s the only way one can use any lord’s name.

“What do I do?” I thought maybe she’d have a cuddly, non-racist bear costume for a 6'7'', 300-pound man in her crafts closet.

“The children are waiting for you. You need to come in… But why did you wear that to school? That’s not funny.”

“I’m a ghost.”

“Well, just come in, I guess.”

I followed her in. The children saw me and got very excited. I sat down and read some Disney jive about Mickey’s not-scary Halloween or something. I had to pull the sheet against my face to see the print through the eyeholes. One of the teachers reluctantly snapped a picture of me reading. I was so embarrassed by looking like a KKK member that I was sweating through the sheet. My stomach was in knots. My breath was heating up my face under the sheet. I was able to feel my blood in my face. I was blushing, which the KKK says is one of the signs of white superiority. In the Bible, Adam is able to show shame by the blood in his face, and white supremacists latch onto that. I sure was feeling shame, but there was no superiority in it.

Then I looked out and saw Moxie. My daughter had started to recognize the husky scratchy slightly too-high voice of her daddy. She was beaming. She was thrilled about Mickey, and about Halloween and about her daddy, who was never up this early in the morning, reading a story to her whole class. She squealed, “That’s my daddy, the Mystery Reader is my daddy.”

My blood went back to being evenly distributed. I took the hat and the sheet off and Mox ran into my arms and I held her. I held her and laughed and cried a little. I laughed because I loved her so much and I cried because I loved her so much. I laughed because she didn’t know anything about the KKK, so I was okay. I cried with relief and joy because these children and I had an African-American president. Then I laughed a little more because I’m such an asshole, and I cried a little more because I love my daughter so much it hurts and I hope everyone gets to feel that kind of blood in their faces.

In my head while writing this: “Alabama”—Neil Young

CANADIAN THANKSGIVING

CANADIAN THANKSGIVING IS ON A DIFFERENT DAY than Thanksgiving in the United States, so I’ll just write a lot of Canadian jokes in this chapter. It’s okay for me to make fun of Canadians, because my people are from Newfoundland (rhymes with “understand”), and that means if I make jokes about how stupid Newfies are, it’s okay. After she read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, my mom claimed that we had some aboriginal American relatives, and some TV show recently did some genealogy research in our family background and proved she might have been telling the truth. She wasn’t really telling the truth; she was telling a lie that, unbeknownst to her, might be true. So, I can make aboriginal American jokes after the Canadian jokes.

My dad told me that I have at least one African-American ancestor. I’m a pretty direct descendant of Captain Cook, who brought syphilis to Hawaii and gave the English the name “limeys.” Statistically, the long line of sailors must have brought in most other nationalities I can think of and some I can’t. My dad worked at a Jewish school. Ethnic jokes are a wide-open territory for me.

I had a mom, I have a wife and daughter, and those are only some of the women I really care about. I’ve been in many situations in my lifetime, and you wouldn’t have to be Rick Santorum to consider some of them gay and perverted. Gender and sexually leaning jokes are wide open for me. Insult comics will use the defense that he or she is offensive to everyone and therefore not offensive at all. Equal opportunity offensiveness is the old- fashioned spin. Sam Kinison and Howard Stern often explained they were just saying what others were thinking. They were honest, and that excuses all. Lenny Bruce’s genius was carried on by George Carlin, and they both used