BRAINS!

So as planned, we participated in Memphis' second Zombie Walk down Beale Street and South Main on Friday. When the monkeys and I arrived home from school/work, Warren had made us each a ham sandwich for dinner.

Ham sandwich? I sniffed.

Yes, he was too busy making homemade blood to cook us anything fancy!


Jiro was the first to get zombie-fied. Sort of. He didn't want to be a zombie. He wanted to be the Emperor from Star Wars. No problem! (This is him shooting lightening out of his fingers.)


Satchel was next. He was not excited. I took him aside and said, "Daddy really wants to do the Zombie Walk. Even if we don't think it is cool let's act like it is really cool, ok?"


Of course Satchel repeated my pep talk to Warren who replied, "We're doing this for Mommy! Not me!"

Then he refused to do my make-up.

Which was really just a ploy for him to spend extra time on his own. Finally, to get him out of the house I said, "Remember on Halloween when we almost missed trick or treating because you spent so long on your make-up?"

Once in the car, he didn't want to wear his seatbelt for fear of messing up the carefully placed blood on his shirt.

"Dude, it would really be dumb to get in a wreck and die because you didn't want to risk messing up your zombie costume!!" (I mean seriously, can you imagine what I would have to tell his parents??)

Once he was buckled in we set off downtown. Warren couldn't help admiring himself in the mirror so I had to rephrase my earlier warning. "Dude, it would really be dumb to get in a wreck and die because you couldn't stop staring at your awesome zombie make-up!!

I guess my warnings sunk in because soon he was saying, "Gosh, I hope my make-up doesn't cause anyone to get in a wreck (because they can't stop staring at me)!"


We finally arrived downtown, safe and sound. Unable to find a good place to park near the Old Daisy where everyone was meeting, we decided to park in my office garage. Oh yes, walking through my office with my zombie family in tow was fun! (At least we gave several people a chance to make witty comments about dragon's blood!)

As we walked towards our meeting place, we got lots of looks from passersby and I could tell that we were in for some fun. When we got about ten feet away from the mob, two very nice women with big grins approached me. They introduced themselves as a fellow blogger and a friend of a friend of mine on livejournal. We chatted for a bit and then the purpose behind the Zombie Walk finally occurred to me. In a nut shell the Zombie Walk symbolizes the power of the internet. It just screams, "Hey! Look what total strangers can convince each other to do!"

The kids, hell all of us, were officially having fun checking out all of our fellow zombies. There were a lot of zombie families which was awesome and a lot of downright awesome make-up. (See lots of pictures here.) I actually started to feel rather schlumpy! (And Steph, before you say anything, that is a FINGER in Satchel's mouth!)



One of the most interesting things to me was the way everyone was just standing around chatting. It was...what's the word? Incongruous? I mean, we all looked like we'd just survived something horrible, but here we were just having fun on Beale Street!


The parade itself was really fun. There were lots and lots of people watching and taking pictures and clapping and cheering and looking horrified and confused and so on. Everyone asked me going into this if it was going to be too scary for the boys. I think that had we been downtown eating or just hanging out and seen a mass of zombies coming our way, then yes. But being in the parade and being dressed up and knowing that it was all just for fun was not scary at all. Satchel and Jiro had a blast. In fact, Satchel came up to me several times and said, "You were right mom, this is cool!"