The Fish Pond: Have You Been Boo'd?

Last night, while I was talking to my sister on the phone, the doorbell rang. It was weird because it was after dark, we were quick getting ready to put the kids to bed, and we certainly weren't expecting anyone. BigDaddyFish and the two bigs scrambled out the door to find a sign taped to our door with "We've Been Boo'd!" on it, complete with ghosty print and image, and a basket sitting on our doorstep. No source to such items was seen.

They brought the basket in the house, and in it we found a Halloween themed cake mix, frosting, card making kit, a set of two little hand towels with ghosts on them, a package of 15 glow bracelets, and a scrolled up poem, explaining that the neighborhood Phantom had struck, and instructing us to Boo two of our neighbors in the next 24 hours.

The kids are just tickled trying to figure out who boo'd us; I have my suspicions, but no concrete evidence.

Evidently, this is something that neighbors sometimes do to one another, and frankly if I wasn't days behind in reading posts I would have known precisely what this was, thanks to Melissa, instead of being rather puzzled, but in a good way. We've lived here for 8 years and this has never happened to us before. One of the things I have always liked about my neighborhood is its sense of community, which really is sometimes difficult to find in the DC area, since people here are frequently transient. We've seen dozens of neighbors come and go, with relatively few being here as long as we have. It's hard to get to know people very well, and our neighborhood has more than 150 townhouses in it; when you account for all kinds of different stages in life and schedules, it's a wonder that we know the people we do. That said, it's a nice neighborhood and, except for our two rental houses that seem to attract Animal House rejects (seriously, we think we had an internet porn ring being run out of one of them for a while), it is full of good people. Like whoever Boo'd us.

We won't be able to reciprocate in 24 hours (I have to wonder if the people who Boo'd us really know us very well, because they would have known we couldn't pass it on in 24), but by the end of the weekend, two of our neighbors will be Boo'd the FishFamily way. What way that is, exactly, I don't know yet, but we'll figure it out. Trout already hand-drew two "We've Been Boo'd" signs to go on people's houses, and I'll hit the dollar store this weekend, and drag out my rubber stamps so we can create a cool package.

I sure am going to miss this place when we move.

Edited to add: We eventually did our own Booing - find out about the results here, complete with the Neighborhood Phantom poem for your own use. Enjoy!