Some advice for would-be pumpkin smashers

← Another 4-year-old gets wise to the cruel, cruel world we live in. Papa’s John →

October 30th, 2010 · 50 comments

In Ohio, one household tries the proactive approach to preventing Halloween thuggery:

(We’ll have to wait to hear back from our submitter Darcy to see if it worked.)

related: Jerk-o-lanterns

FILED UNDER: Halloween · most popular notes of 2010 · Ohio · stealing · vandalism

50 responses so far ↓

#1 goddessmaster

I. Love. It. !

Oct 30, 2010 at 3:00 pm rating: 90

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#2 jakeneff

“Have fun kids.” Do they really want vandals having kids at all?

Oct 30, 2010 at 3:10 pm rating: 90

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#3 Team Beasly

I like the Fight Club reference

Oct 30, 2010 at 3:25 pm rating: 90

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- #3.1 Mel K
  
  I like the GI Joe reference!
  
  Oct 31, 2010 at 1:55 am rating: 90
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#4 NikkiB

OMG. That’s amazing.

I really want them to be my neighbor. Really really. But only if they find reasons to posts list like this one on a regular basis. Only not the same list. Different lists. Duh.

Oct 30, 2010 at 3:25 pm rating: 90

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#5 John D

Advice #2 is nonsensical…

If they can’t read, how are they going to follow it?

Oct 30, 2010 at 3:27 pm rating: 90

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- #5.1 Gretchen
  
  Maybe they could have a fellow hoodlum read it to them? Then said hoodlum could be the one to teach them to read.
  
  I’d vote “team note writer on this,” but
  a) It’s almost certainly not going to do any good, and probably actually work against them. Taunting potential vandals is not a good idea, and
  b) assuming someone doesn’t know their father is a special kind of cold, and it’s even colder if you turn out to be right.
  
  Oct 30, 2010 at 3:38 pm rating: 90
- #5.2 AuntyBron
  
  “…knowing is half the battle”?
  
  Yeah knowing which house to target
  T.P – check
  Soap for windows – check
  Rotten eggs – check
  Potato for tailpipe – check
  
  Oct 31, 2010 at 12:32 am rating: 90
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#6 lagne

This note has pretty much guaranteed their house will be burned to the ground by Monday morning.

Oct 30, 2010 at 3:32 pm rating: 90

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- #6.1 BrookeDiz
  
  Unless there’s a spotlight trained on this note, no pumpkin vandal will be able to read it.
  
  Hmmm, which might be just the ticket for saving the house.
  
  Oct 30, 2010 at 10:35 pm rating: 90
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#7 Hear Me Roar

HA! Fooled you!
Re-enacting the Battle of Gettysburg is exactly how your Halloween decorations got broken!

Your house made a great Cemetery Ridge.

Oct 30, 2010 at 4:29 pm rating: 90

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#8 Hear Me Roar

Since they don’t know just who the vandals are, haven’t they already lost half the battle?

Maybe now is not the best time to counter-attack, best to regroup for next year’s campaign.
Or maybe they’re recreating the Battle of Stalingrad…dig in and don’t retreat no matter how outnumbered you happen to be.

Oct 30, 2010 at 4:34 pm rating: 90

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- #8.1 RedDelicious
  
  My vote is for cleverly disguised Halloween Land Mines.
  
  Oct 30, 2010 at 5:10 pm rating: 90
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#9 Hear Me Roar

Halloween decorations are destroyed by Christian Fundamentalists.
Retaliation comes when baby Jesus is stolen from manger scenes at Christmastime.

Sic Semper Paybackus Vandalis!!

Oct 30, 2010 at 4:48 pm rating: 90

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- #9.1 Canthz_B
  
  Maybe, but the Christian kids think they are fighting Satan’s growing influence in the world.
  The Baby Jesus thieves are just out for a good time.
  
  All in all, I think I’d rather have a good time while school is out for a week, than fight Satan when I don’t even get a damned day off…excuse the pun.
  
  Oct 30, 2010 at 5:11 pm rating: 90
- #9.2 WMDKitty
  
  So… Hail Satan?
  
  Oct 31, 2010 at 6:20 am rating: 90
- #9.3 park rose
  
  CB, I read that as Santa the first time I read your note. It makes so much more sense to me this morning, and no, I wasn’t even tipsy!
  
  Oct 31, 2010 at 11:53 am rating: 90
- #9.4 Maas
  
  Rose, have you ever seen the two in the same place?
  
  Oct 31, 2010 at 5:36 pm rating: 90
- #9.5 Canthz_B
  
  WMDKitty, hail that which does not exist (or fight it) all you wish.
  
  Nov 1, 2010 at 1:32 am rating: 90
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#10 Roo

It just makes me want to go out of my way to smash their precious pumpkins.

Oct 30, 2010 at 5:23 pm rating: 90

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- #10.1 WMDKitty
  
  Fuck. Yes.
  
  Oct 31, 2010 at 6:23 am rating: 90
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#11 pony girl

Where do these pumpkin-smashings occur?
I’ve celebrated Halloween in 4 different states and I’ve never personally known anyone who’s had a pumpkin smashed/stolen.

Oct 30, 2010 at 5:51 pm rating: 90

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- #11.1 Grant
  
  I live near Kansas City, MO, and it happens around here. I remember spending hours carving an awesome dragon into a pumpkin using a stencil when I was a kid. Then someone smashed it on our driveway, and I was really upset. I haven’t carved a pumpkin since.
  
  Oct 30, 2010 at 6:28 pm rating: 90
- #11.2 Canthz_B
  
  You only hear complaints like this from people who are out of their gourds.
  
  Oct 30, 2010 at 6:31 pm rating: 90
- #11.3 Jen
  
  When I was younger, we had pumpkins, carved and whole, taken from our yard and smashed on the road. They also pulled wooden tombstones and “bodies” out of the yard and destroyed them, too. The teens doing the smashing thought it was fun to do bad things to anything that wasn’t chained down or guarded by electric fence or other extreme measures. There was a period of about 4 years where we didn’t put out any Halloween or Christmas decorations because they’d steal them or break them. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything we could do about it, since our only proof was the bragging they did on the bus to and from school, and their parents only said “You can’t prove it, so it couldn’t have been our sons”. These were the same kids who thought nothing of trying to shoot my 8-yr-old sister at close range w/ a paintball gun because she was riding her bike on a public road in front of their house, so there were a lot of problems in general with the group. Since the handful of them grew up, we haven’t had any other problems with pumpkins or decorations.
  
  Oct 31, 2010 at 11:50 pm rating: 90
- #11.4 Rattus
  
  Not yet. Wait until they find a few slatterns who will lie still long enough to be impregnated by them and the resulting spawn develop enough muscle mass to wield a crowbar.
  
  Nov 1, 2010 at 8:10 am rating: 90
- #11.5 Andrea
  
  Our neighborhood actually had a tradition of pumpkin smashing when I was growing up. On Halloween day (or whenever trick-or-treating was) nobody would touch the pumpkins, then the next day everyone would go out in the dark and smash them, adults included. If you got seen everyone started yelling your name in a shameful way and you had to put it back and try another one without getting caught.
  Then the following morning someone from our town government or whoever would be in charge of that would come and sweep the streets and clean everything. It was better then some people letting their pumpkins rot on their porches for a month. Plus, you knew it was coming so if you wanted to save one you could just take it inside.
  
  Nov 9, 2010 at 4:19 pm rating: 90
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#12 Grant

This is funny and stuff, but I think it just makes it more likely that someone will smash their pumpkins.

Oct 30, 2010 at 6:26 pm rating: 90

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#13 Madrias

Point me in the right direction with a sledgehammer, this pumpkin smashing sounds like fun.

Seriously: It’s. A. Fucking. Pumpkin. People will smash the damn things no matter what you write. Pumpkin smashers crush and run. They’re not going to read your note, they’re gonna stomp it in or chuck it into the street. Or they’ll chuck it against your house and run like hell.

Oct 30, 2010 at 7:51 pm rating: 90

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- #13.1 Archbishop of Candyland
  
  Aw, are you missing Gallagher? Come on over, I’ve got plastic sheeting. We can have a Gallagher-fest while smashing pumpkins. It’ll have to be pumpkins; watermelon is out of season.
  
  Oct 30, 2010 at 8:47 pm rating: 90
- #13.2 Madrias
  
  My point was mostly in the second half of my statement. The first half was my little reference back to when I was 10 and smashed the neighbor’s pumpkin with a sledgehammer from the garage.
  
  Yes, even I had smashed a pumpkin, but at least I had the balls to do it in front of the pumpkin owners.
  
  Oct 30, 2010 at 11:35 pm rating: 90
- #13.3 jason
  
  Indeed. The premise behind this note, that it will hurt the smasher’s feelings, is so ridiculous that I can’t believe viewers of this site can get any enjoyment out of reading it.
  
  When the smashers come back to check on their work or smash the next pumpkin, they will laugh and make fun of you for writing the note. They are laughing at you-NOT feeling remorseful.
  
  Oct 31, 2010 at 11:19 am rating: 90
- #13.4 Madrias
  
  Precisely. It’s one of those cause and effect things:
  
  If you put out a pumpkin, there is a very good chance you’ll have pumpkin pieces to clean up.
  If you put out a pumpkin and a note, you will have pumpkin pieces to clean up, and half of it will be on the roof.
  
  Oct 31, 2010 at 1:53 pm rating: 90
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#14 La La Land

Number 8. My favorite.

Oct 30, 2010 at 8:05 pm rating: 90

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#15 Wade

In Soviet Russia pumpkin smashes you. Utah too.

Oct 30, 2010 at 8:09 pm rating: 90

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- #15.1 FeRD
  
  And then, not even a month later:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ST01bZJPuE0
  
  Oct 30, 2010 at 9:08 pm rating: 90
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#16 Archbishop of Candyland

Personally I’m glad the Christian Fundamentalists got all up in arms and decided that Halloween had to be rescheduled to Saturday this year. I’m going to be too busy fighting the undead to bother working around all those trick-or-treaters this year. There’s a zombie apocalypse coming, you know. It will be preceeded by mysteriously smashed pumpkins.

Oct 30, 2010 at 8:37 pm rating: 90

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- #16.1 WMDKitty
  
  LOL, I’m kinda surprised they haven’t decided that celebrating Halloween is “Devil worship”.
  
  Yet.
  
  Oct 31, 2010 at 6:24 am rating: 90
- #16.2 park rose
  
  Tis the season for the Monster Mash after all, isn’t it?
  
  Oct 31, 2010 at 11:57 am rating: 90
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#17 Katkra

At least it doesn’t come off as whiny-sounding as all the “you stole our four-year-old’s pumpkin” guilt trips. I only had a pumpkin smashed one year, and it didn’t happen until late Halloween night, so it wasn’t like it wasn’t going to be thrown away soon anyway.

Oct 30, 2010 at 10:29 pm rating: 90

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#18 PrettyWitty

great list except if they can’t read (#2) kind of defeats the purpose.

Let’s all hope they’re got #2 checked off the list before reading it.

Oct 31, 2010 at 12:08 am rating: 90

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#19 JetJackson

Has this person never heard of Schumpeters creative destruction?

Oct 31, 2010 at 9:53 pm rating: 90

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#20 M

I had my pumpkin smashed before it pissed me off at first. I worked so hard and it looked awesome. It sucks, I know its just a pumpkin but its low, and idiotic to do something like that. Maybe my humour is different but I don’t see anything funny about smashing a pumpkin. Like whoop dee freakin doo.

Oct 31, 2010 at 10:45 pm rating: 90

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#21 Gavin

I got lost on the first suggestion, what did the second one say?

Nov 1, 2010 at 4:08 am rating: 90

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#22 divaandwriter

I like these people, and I don’t even know them. Anyone who can write a great snarky note like this deserves to have an invisible force field around their house to preserve it from vandals.

Nov 1, 2010 at 10:08 am rating: 90

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#23 The Elf

All of these things are harder than changing the toilet paper roll.

Nov 1, 2010 at 11:49 am rating: 90

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#24 Glo

Forget about it being “only a pumpkin”…it is somebodys possession. WTF is really wrong with these pumpkin smashers who “need a life” and I guess were not invited to any good Halloween parties, so they take it out on poor defenseless pumpkins. I live in NYC and if I happen to see/catch a so called “pumpkin smasher” heading my way, I’ll take a 2 X 4 to his head so hard, he won’t know what hit him, guaranteed, I’ll smash my own kind of pumpkin…stay the hell off my property!

Nov 1, 2010 at 10:06 pm rating: 90

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- #24.1 Canthz_B
  
  Any relation to Bernard Goetz? Curtis Sliwa?
  
  Chill out, it was only a doormat, and it’s been eight months since it was stolen…get over it.
  
  Nov 1, 2010 at 11:05 pm rating: 90
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#25 Bubby

I heart this note.

Nov 2, 2010 at 8:02 pm rating: 90

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#26 Eric

The first time I read this, I thought it said, “Start an Elmo band.” Then I reread it, and now I’m disappointed…

Nov 3, 2010 at 9:24 am rating: 90

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