--- By Joe Petrulionis
Halloween and all through the store,
Bing Crosby's _White Christmas_ played at a roar.
There just for candy, not decorations, not gifts,
but the store needed profits and the economy a lift.
The crowds were cantankerous, the cashiers rude,
To my, "Sir, Where's the candy?" the clerk said,
"dunno Dude."
My temples were throbbing when I asked him the reason.
Sez, "Trick-or-treat candy was gone for the season."
"Its Halloween, surely you have candy to sell."
He answered in a language I don't know very well.
Then he pointed upstairs, with his middle finger;
and he growled so loudly I didn't dare linger.
Walked all around, never found the next floor;
But a half box of Snickers for sale by the door.
I snatched up a handful dashed to the express line.
A couple before me was having a hard time.
Their cards would not swipe, they needed a manager,
whose key would not fix it. I suggested a hammer.
The elderly wife looked sweetly in my face.
And blasted me point blank with pepper spray mace.
Then out on the lot there arose such a din,
run away shopping carts in hurricane winds.
I dodged and I dashed and I tried really hard.
Several carts broadsided my new smart car.
As I pulled into my drive and turned off my lights
some teenagers egged me and disappeared in the night.
As I stepped over the threshold I soon realized
that the snicker bars were still at the store in a bag.
So my mood was real bad when my wife got home
from her costume party she'd attended alone.
Dressed as a Victoria Secret Angel...yes, wings and all.
I stood there dumbfounded as she heeled down the hall,
dragging a fourteen foot scotch pine, yep newly cut.
She said only, "Darling, would you mind if we put the tree up?"
"It won't fit," I cried, "in our nine foot den,"
"So where do you want it," she asked with a grin.
And that's how that angel got up on the tree
all because Christmas does not start on Halloween!
This so called "poem" was first read at a Sigma Tau Delta (Honorary English Society) meeting at Penn State University--Altoona. Shown here are Joe and Sandy Petrulionis exhibiting their entries for the "ugly sweater" competition.
