HAPPY HALLOW...Nope.

The only radio station I really listen to is K-LOVE. But during the month of October my guilty pleasure is always Thriller Thursdays on Alice 107.7. On Thriller Thursdays people email and call in with their creepy "true" stories. Ghost stories, demon stories, mysterious and unexplainable stories, etc.

I always listen to Thriller Thursdays while be-bopping around my house getting ready for work. Usually after each story I roll my eyes like, "Of COURSE he thought he saw a demon, he took a ouija board to a cemetery and started chanting for dark spirits! Idiot." or "Good grief, that girl needs Jesus in her life." 

Having been feeling slightly convicted about my Thriller Thursday listening ways, I rationalized that it was only 4 mornings a year! The other 361 were wholesome music days. What was the harm in 4 little mornings of ghost stories? 

This morning, the final Thriller Thursday of the year I woke up particularly excited. The last Thriller Thursday is always the scariest, and this year's Thriller Thursday actually fell on Halloween! I flipped on the radio and hopped out of bed. With eerie music playing in the background I bopped into my living room to turn on the lights. I flipped the switches on my light panel and with a loud "POP!" my kitchen light, living room lights, and dining room lights all briefly popped on and then went dark! In a blind panic I flipped the switches on and off repeatedly...nothing. Strangely, despite the lights not working, my radio stayed on. 

I stood there in the dark, rain pouring outside, with creepy Thriller Thursday music playing in the background and some girl on the radio telling a story about how she thought she was being chased by a demon one time and she kept trying to turn on the lights in her house but the bulbs kept burning out. Suuuuuuperrrrr. 

I made a mad dash for the radio and flicked it to the K-LOVE preset as quickly as possible. Then I found one of the emergency lanterns my dad gave me and got to work on the fuse box. Sadly, I could not get the lights to come back on. Which means I had to get ready for work by lantern light...during a storm...on Halloween.

Suddenly, the routine things I do literally EVERY morning seem like the scariest things in the world. I think a set a world record for Quickest Shower. Have you ever taken a shower via candles and lantern? It seems like it would be relaxing:

But really all I could imagine the whole time was the shower scene from Psycho:

The worst part was, after surviving my shower, I had to get ready for work in the dark. Have you ever tried to put on mascara by candlelight? I'm pretty sure when I got to work this morning my officemates just looked at me and thought, "Good grief. Katie Beth just came to work 30 minutes late wearing Halloween makeup!" Nope, not Halloween makeup, just regular makeup I attempted to apply in the dark. 

Well, That's Fine!

While sitting at work one day 2 years ago my office phone rang and I answered. My mother's voice demanded, "Do you know what WTF means!?" I answered that I did, and she explained that she had thought it meant "Well, that's fine." So she had been using it in daily conversations, texts, and emails with people. As in, "Hey, I heard you couldn't bring a casserole to our small group potluck, WTF!" or "You forgot to buy milk. WTF!" During a teacher conference that day she had used "WTF," and was met with looks of shock from the other teachers. That is when she learned the actual meaning of WTF and called me at work, absolutely horrified. My mom, who raised two strong-willed children with nary a cuss word had been using abbreviated cuss-phrases for weeks without realizing it.

I should have known something was amiss. She had just started using "text language" in our emails back and forth, and her use of LOL always seemed uncharacteristically sarcastic and rude. For instance, I would send her an email telling her about my tough day, and she would respond with, "I'm so sorry to hear about your awful day. LOL!" or "Sorry you can't make it to dinner tonight. Dad and I will miss you! LOL!" After the WTF incident I asked her what she thought LOL meant and she said, "Lots of love, of course."

Naturally, I called everyone in my family howling with laughter to tell this story. Eventually it it got passed around so much by word of mouth it wound up being told on a local radio station. For Christmas that year one of our senior pastors got her a "Text Messaging and Online Abbreviations Guide."