Some friends of mine were hosting this Halloween party. These friends all live in the same house and have this plucky little startup software company called Pirate Software. We refer to these people, collectively, as The Pirates. As in, "I invited The Pirates to the next party" or "I'm going over to visit the Pirates". So Windy and I got this "great" idea: we'd gather as many people as were willing, dress as pirates, board the party through a window and proceed to wrek havok: yell "ARRRR!" continually, spill cheap rum everywhere, harass women, take food and drink from the hands of partygoers and consume it, strip others of their watches and wallets and stuff them into our pillowcase loot-bags, and other unwelcome and very pirate-y behavior. If someone unexpectedly did that at *my* halloween party, I'd be grateful till the end of my days. It sounded like such fun!
Windy and I recruited Scot, Nathan and West. We all gathered at Windy's house on the night of the party and dressed each other. Between us, Windy and I have SO MANY costume components that all I had to buy were several cheap eyepatches and a couple of red-and-white striped shirts. Everything else was simply cobbled together from our wardrobes. I brought markers and large pieces of cardboard from which to cut big fake pirate swords and daggers. Here I am doing just that.
The Salty Dogs...
What's this? Mutiny?! No, it's just West menacing me while I continue to cut out our cardboard swords. I didn't even know this had happened until I was dumping the photos out of the camera into the computer and editing them for size and orientation. "Hey!" I said. I didn't know about that other photo of me up at the top there, either. The one of me and my cleavage, cutting out swords. Some of the less outgoing of our crew were having a hard time thinking of pirate-like things to shout while boarding the party, so we wrote scripts and lists of vernacular on our swords. Below, West reads aloud from his sword.
This photo is one of my favorites. Besides the obvious partiality (is that a word?) that i feel toward the subject matter, I am really fond of the way it turned out. I'm pretty sure that Windy took this photo (the camera got passed around a lot), but I have no idea how she got Scot in focus but the background with a motion blur. I think this one will get framed somewhere in the living room. Very stylish!
Finally, everyone was dressed and armed. Scot got a small plastic sabre and the rest of us got cardboard weapons. Everyone put on their eyepatches and Windy and I took turns standing-in and photographing the crew. It's too bad there wasn't anyone else around to photograph all of us together. If anyone else had shown up, however, we would have thrown some pirate clothes on them, too, and recruited them for the battle ahead.
That's the end of the photos for that evening, but the story (such as it is) continues. After the group photos were taken, we all ran out and piled into two cars. We drove to the Pirate Party. It was pouring rain and very cold and miserable. We'd called ahead about an hour prior and confided in one of the Pirates. We didn't want to reveal our plan, but we wanted to be pointed toward a suitable window and ensure that our entry was unlocked and accessible. We were given our choice of two windows: one that lead directly into the dining room (where all the party food was) or one that led into the living room. When we got there, we realized that our ladder wasn't tall enough to reach the dining room window. That left the living room window, which was accessible via the porch. Gathering together, we crept along the sidewalk toward the porch, which we found occupied with smokers.
So much for a surprise. Taking it all in stride, we started giggling and shushing each other loudly, jostling and generally trying to pretend like an inept bunch of not-very-stealthy pirates. A couple of the smokers on the porch noticed us as we approached, but didn't show too much interest. Finally, Windy gave a cry of "ATTACK!" and we rushed the last fifteen feet and thundered up the wooden steps to the porch. "SECURE THE PORCH!" I yelled, looking around for the window we were supposed to climb through. I saw one small window but quickly decided that couldn't possibly be it. We menaced the smokers with our swords and yelled "ARRRR!" a lot. The smokers remained unimpressed, but one of them chuckled a bit. Looking around, I found Windy opening the small window.... which I then identified as the only window and therefore our intended mode of entry. It looked so.... improbable! But Windy already had the window open and was hollering something into it, before looking over her shoulder to gather us in with her glare.
I ran over and held the window open (It was one of those old wood-frame, single-pane sashes that you lift straight up). About 15 inches up, it stuck. I yanked on it some more, but it quickly became apparant that it wasn't going anywhere. Windy was halfway through the window at this point. There were breakables on a table that people were scurrying to move out of her way. I rapped on the window with my cardboard sword and yelled, "ARRR!" A woman was sitting on the couch directly in front of the window and just looked blankly at the pirate climbing in onto her lap. "ARRR! THIS PARTY BE BOARDED!" Windy yelled at the woman, who still refused to move. Finally something clicked and the woman scooted down enough to allow Windy to finish clambering in and perch up on the back of the couch. I started in after her, but had to holler for a crewmate to hold the window open for me. As I began the torturous process of wedging my skirted bulk through the smallish opening, I heard mutinous mutterings behind me: "...there's no way..." "...you couldn't pay me enough..." "...not a chance..."
I turned around and hissed, "You'd better come in through this window!" and heard back, "No way! We're going in through the door!" By this time, I was halfway in the window; butt on the couch, legs out the window. "RUM!" shouted Windy. "RUM!" I yelled out the window. I had to yell it twice more before my traitorous crewmates finally passed the bottle in, and then they were gone, in through the front door. Bugger! So now Windy and I were left alone in a roomfull of non-costume-wearing, largely unamused people that we didn't even know. Such fun. Windy and I yelled some more and menaced some more unamused people, then went into the foyer to re-unite with our wayward crewmates. We made up some sort of skit on the spot in which Windy and I seemed not to have known about the door. It was funny, but no one laughed.
We wandered though the house a bit more... nibbled some food in the dining room, attempted more humor in the kitchen, ignored the glares in the living room. The boys didn't seem to notice anything, but Windy and I met up in the foyer and I whispered, "Is it just me, or is no one amused?" Windy nodded and compressed her lips into a thin, disapproving line and replied, "This is an awful party." We gathered the boys, who didn't have any idea what we were so bothered about, and went back to Windy's to drink some more.
THE END.