Morphological Confetti

I must admit that Halloween has very little meaning to me now as an adult. I still like to see the weird and funny costumes when I walk on the street, but otherwise I have no interest. Now, it was a different story when I was a kid in 1976 because this meant free candy and cool costumes! All the little kids in my neighborhood wore the latest fad costumes ( ex. Six Million-Dollar Man, Kiss, Wonder Woman, etc. ) while the big kids were out snatching bags. Yeah, I was a victim. I think that I first got robbed in 4th grade. I stood there trembling as some “Big Boy” went through my pockets. We were scared of those larger kids, but the one thing that big and little kids were scared of the most on Halloween was The Green Lady ! She was our very own Southeast/Northeast DC urban legend. There were only a few sightings of The Green Lady , but all the kids were afraid of her. She was worst than Candyman and she hated children. She was this old lady with skin that was painted green. She had wil...

She was my grandmother's older sister. Amanita was born and raised right here in Washington, D.C. My grandmother described her as the "party" sister or at least the more adventurous one. She hit all of the hot spots as a young woman in DC during the 1940’s. Her favorite hang out spots were places like, The Howard Theater and bars like The Casbah on U Street. She would outgrow the DC scene and move to Chicago sometime in the 1950’s. She lived on the South Side of Chicago for almost 20 years before moving back to DC in the late 60’s. By the time I came along Amanita had lived most of her life. She settled down into an apartment on E street in Northeast DC. As a matter of fact, her apartment was right across the hall from my grandmother’s place. Amanita would get me dressed every morning for school when I began kindergarten at Gibbs Elementary in 1972. She would fuss and tug as she tried to get me ready for school in the morning. I would always asked her for some ...