Phantom Shmantom

Meet my neighbor, The Ghoul. He’s trying to have me for dinner.

“No, really,” I told him. “I just ate.”

I offered to pass out his family’s candy while he escorted his little Ghoulette during the Halloween trick-or-treating process, but when they returned I could tell he thought I’d eaten it all.

Untrue, of course. I only ate the good stuff. No Jolly Ranchers or Tootsie Rolls for me, not when the Ghoul Family Candy Trove included Mounds and Peppermint Patties. Oh, yeah, and a couple of Junior Mint boxes, too.

Besides, this is what you call karma, baby — it’s exactly what the Ghoul Family deserved. After all, they were the first that year to bring that darkest of evils, the Phantom, to our neighborhood.

May God have mercy on their Body Mass Indexes.

Tell me, exactly, what a woman is to do when she’s home alone — her husband at work, her teenage boys at swim team — and the doorbell rings and she opens it and is cruelly overcome by…

…a plate of home-made chocolate chip cookies?

Unless you want this frightening scenario to happen to you, it’s best to be prepared.

For a long time my best anti-Phantom tip was this: Lie. Download a copy of the Phantom letter and fasten it to your door BEFORE you get Phantomed. Taping a Phantom letter to your door lets the world know you’ve already been Phantomed — or in this case it means you’re fibbing about being Phantomed — but either way it works. It makes you off limits for Phantomers.

But what if you wait too long and get Phantomed anyway? Just do what I do: make sure nobody’s looking and then sneak all those Phantom droppings over to another house, ring the doorbell and run like hell.

It works great. I did it all last October, until that one night I re-Phantomed a plate of Snickers bars and popcorn balls across the street to Helena’s house. Three days later, the same plate of Snickers bars and popcorn balls landed on my doorstep.

Of course, I ran it right over to Didi’s house (bwa ha!) but I ask you: how many doorsteps did that Phantom plate land on before returning to my home?

Or maybe Helena didn’t re-Phantom somebody (who re-Phantomed me). Maybe — just maybe — that plate crawled over the sidewalk, slithered onto my front porch and wriggled back to my doorstep… where it waited for me to find it again.

I hate that damn Phantom.

For those of you so wickedly inclined, get your own copy of the Phantom letter. And may God have mercy on your Body Mass Indexes.

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