Behind the scenes - Zombie Story

I woke up incredibly early in order to have enough time to dress up in a handful of costumes so that I could start the Halloween Costume Series (I love making my ideas sound official). By the time afternoon rolled around I was on the Hipster Dude and in full beard. That is when Tyrone walked in the door from work. I hurried up and ducked down behind the make-shift backdrop I had made and cringed because I was knew I was in for it. I don't mean that as in I was due for a beatin'. I mean Tyrone was going to lay in to making fun of me. I just knew it. But instead of hiding out for too long I popped up and looked over the backdrop at him. I waited, but all I got was a smirk and he asked, "What the hell are you doing?"

"You remember that thing I told you I was going to do on my blog for Halloween? That's what I am doing. Don't be jealous of my beard."

I didn't get as much flack from Tyrone as I thought I was going to in fact he actually thought it was a little cool. Jumping on his positivity I asked him if he would like to do that zombie thing today that I had asked him about. Surprisingly, only pausing for a few seconds, (which was nice because I didn't have to pass out from holding my breath too long), he responded with a freaking YES and there continued one of the best days of my entire life. An entire day of dress up. I was in heaven. 4 year old Brandy was as giddy as could be.

 

Tyrone: "If I'm going do this, I am going to do it right."

 

Interjecting quickly as not to let any enthusiasm die down, I added that if he wanted to buy supplies we needed to head out soon so we left right away to the Costume Closet. I was worried that we would lose the natural light that was beaming through our living room that day. We left right away and came home with some pricey aesthetics but it was worth it. Tyrone is a pro at this stuff so I'm hoping that he will do a tutorial on the blog soon. Cross your fingers.

 

After the photo shoot we were pretty pumped and didn't want to take our makeup off so we left the house to cause some havoc. We went to 7-Eleven to get Slurpees and a patron asked if we were doing some zombie walk. "Uh, no. We're just weird."

We decided to drive down to my parents house and scare the little kids in their neighborhood and show off our craftsmanship. (I'm sure some of you zombie connoisseurs won't agree with that statement.) I had to drive because Tyrone's vision was slightly impaired due to his eye ball having fell out of the socket. Okay, okay, so it was more like torn out or ripped out of of his freaking skull. I'm a bit fuzzy on the specifics because I may or may not have been the one who caused that. While driving down there Tyrone was trying to scare this young girl who was driving and texting for miles but she would never look up from her damn phone to notice him. I managed to stay right next to her so he could pull it off and finally as she lifted her head from what all I can assume was a hot-and-heavy sexting session with her girlfriend, she looked up at him in terror which made her swerve a little. That of course aroused a laughing fit for the both of us and we drove off pleased as two mangled peas in a bloody pod.

Once we arrived to my parent's house Tyrone immediately ran off to find some children to scare. He's a big kid at heart. If you can picture a grown man in a red hoodie with a pretty bloody face running around a quiet small town neighborhood looking for children, you can see how amusing this was to me. He spent most of his time outside exchanging phone numbers with the ten-year-olds and agreed to teach them all how to do that to their own faces or he agreed to buy them all Halloween costumes, I'm not really sure what went on there. I have been expecting to see him receive more calls asking him if he's allowed to come over and jump their Razor scooters off the park tables together.

 

What I was not expecting was to have my SIL and my nephew show up. I immediately began to panic and told Tyrone not to go running outside and scare my nephew and if he did I would have to rip the other eye ball out with my left thumb. Naturally he didn't take my threat seriously and proceeded out the front door. It's not like we just had green makeup and black eyeliner on. I mean, we really looked scary ESPECIALLY to a toddler. Hagen, my nephew, IMMEDIATELY freaked out and super glued himself to my mother's legs. As I'm sweating bullets in the living room watching this through the window I knew this wasn't going to be good. I mean, we're already on rocky soil with one another. I did not need to be the nightmare inducing Auntie. A little bad dream here and there, maybe, but not nightmares. At least not at this age. 

After they brought him in the house my parent's were trying to calm him down. I was hiding in the spare bedroom and thought maybe if I talked really sweetly and asked him if he wanted to touch my face maybe he wouldn't be so scared but that kid kept those lids shut as tight as possible. He would just squint and scream. I walked away for a second and then tried again. Squint and Scream. My heart, totally breaking, finally gave up and went to the bathroom to take it all off. I had my fun but it was time to take the itchy shit off and try mending my destroyed relationship with him. I felt terrible. 

After maybe a half hour or so he finally warmed up to the fact that Tyrone and I were in fact OK and that our faces were back to being normal/less scary. His inquisitive side-eye leered in our direction for a little while longer until he finally got up enough courage to walk over to me and in his own way see if I was indeed still just his crazy aunt. It took even longer for him to walk over to Tyrone (who he calls Guy, not because he sees him as a stranger but because he's still learning his "T" sounds, Guy = Ty) and make sure he was still his distant uncle. I say distant because Tyrone isn't into babies and until recently he's kept an arms length distance from the kid. Now that Hagen has become more interactive (like an Elmo doll) Tyrone is moving in closer and closer every time.

 

Suffice to say I was relieved when he didn't squint and scream the next time we saw each other.

 

All of this for two lousy pictures hanging above our mantle.