Below is a guest blog from Sweetums, who is asking advice on how to best use our 12-foot Halloween skeleton in our yard.
By Wil Elrick
There’s a huge box sitting on my patio. It holds the must-have thing for this Halloween: a 12-foot-tall skeleton sold by Home Depot. Even if you are not a Halloween fan, you have probably still seen the stories making their way through the media because when they are in stock, they sell out within hours.
Believe it or not, last year when these giants were introduced to the market, I had one in my hand in my local Home Depot. The mammoth bony yard decoration was on display in all his full height glory and there were several available to purchase. Had I known that getting this skeleton later would be the equivalent of finding toilet paper in spring of 2020, I would have jumped at the chance. As it was, I merely thought “Oh that’s pretty cool” and went on with my business.
Over the next several months, different social media memes would pop up showing the gigantor skeleton for sale and I realized it was more popular than I had initially believed. So our 2020 Halloween was missing a skeleton that was as tall as our one-story house.
Then in July 2021, Home Depot announced that it would be stocking the skeletons in advance of the Halloween season – and it would now be joined by a friend, a skeleton with a pumpkin head. Kelly and various friends were emailing, calling and telling me the news. I guess the peer pressure got to me, because I found myself wanting one.
The addition of a pumpkin skeleton also piqued my interest because –little-known fact – scary pumpkin people are my favorite kind of Halloween horror. I decided that I would try to order myself a giant pumpkin skeleton. The day arrived for the sale to go live so I logged on and what do you know, they’d already sold out. I tried periodically through the next morning when, all of a sudden, the giant pumpkin skeleton appeared on my screen. I was still thinking there was no way I was going to get one but I put it in my cart and ordered.
A couple of hours later, I got the email saying “your order may not be fulfilled” which I took to be a “probability” and not positively. But in late July Home Depot emailed me again saying that my order would be fulfilled before October 1, 2021, but I was still hesitant. Then last week I awoke to a text on my phone that my order was ready to be picked up at my local Home Depot.
Even with this confirmation I was still waiting for the Halloween rug to be pulled out from under me. Surely, I would get to the store and there was a mix up and I would be left to wallow in my skeletonless tears. It was with much trepidation that Kelly and I went to the order pick-up counter to give them the order number and the lovely lady said, “It will be right out.” A ten-minute wait fueled my doubts again until an employee approached and asked me to pull around to the loading area because the package was too large to pull through the store. We managed to cram the giant box into the back of the Explorer.
And now we are owners of a 12-foot skeleton.
It’s sitting in a huge box on the patio because we are at a loss as to what to do with it. We’ve been talking about having him lean over the front porch but we haven’t decided. I would love to hear some interesting ideas, so let us know in the comments or email wile91575@gmail.com.
KellyKazek.com 