This is my jack o’ lantern:

Not the jack o’ lantern, mind you, but one of them. This specific creation sucks too much to be "the" jack o' lantern.

I went with the classic triangle-eyes look, but it’s flawed. For one thing, Jack’s left eye looks like a pennant. For another, his mouth, even if it was straight, would serve a purpose no grander than coin insertion.

I made him quickly and with all the passion of someone who’d rather be doing anything else, but I had a good reason: I was racing against the sun. I was Van Helsing, and the pumpkin was, I don’t know, Lucy.

It’s tough to take outdoor pictures of jack o’ lanterns at night. The flash just washes them out. Rushing was necessary.

Besides, Jack's eyes and mouth could afford to suck. He wasn’t going to be defined by cutout shapes. No, Jack’s destiny involved ears made out of extruded polystyrene foam.

Made by PAAS in 1993, it’s the official Monster Parts kit, which allows you to dress pumpkins (among other things) up like big-eared monsters with prominent snouts.

I found this in what used to be a greeting card shop, but has transformed, over the course of decades, into a miniature flea market. You never know what you’ll find in that store, but there’s always something dusty and awesome, and the prices are never firm. This isn’t a place I’d purchase candy from unless I had a desperate need to throw up something poisonous, but for random old junk, it’s great.

As for PAAS, who I shall now refer to as "Paas" because the capitalization drives me out of me fucking mind: You probably remember them better as the masters of Easter egg dyeing kits. Halloween was always their second biggest deal, and somewhere beneath their endless pile of makeup kits that let us become the Joker or the Statue of Liberty, we’d find insane things like this.

The package offers several ideas on what to do with your monster parts, but the premiere suggestion is, of course, making a killer jack 'o lantern. And I’ve never been one to wave off a premiere suggestion. Well, I may have been long ago, but I don’t have any rebellion left in me.

As the package states, the set includes a pair of ears and a nose. With other versions of the kit, this may have been accurate, but these "ears" look more like "wings" to me. No, I’m not complaining. I’d prefer owning a pumpkin who flies than one who hears. He can be my deaf sentry, trusted with only my most critical defensive missions.

Also included is a headband, in case you want to use the ears to dress yourself up. I don’t. I’ve already spent too much of the Halloween season dressed like a jackass. I'll let the pumpkin have his turn.

The final ingredient is a sheet of double-sided adhesive foam, to attach the parts to whatever you plan to attach them to. Remarkably, the stuff is still adhesive even after almost twenty years. I’d call it a miracle, but I can’t see any higher power really giving a shit if some shady card store’s Halloween decorations worked as advertised.

The end result is...interesting. "Interesting" may be a generous summation, but it’s hard to rail on things you had fun doing, even when those things were stupid.

There were several "Monster Parts" kits available, but Paas never bothered to name them. Looking at the others, it was easy to figure out what they represented. Frankenstein’s Monster? Easy. The cute mouse? Easy.

This one isn’t so easy. I’m guessing it’s supposed to be a bat? The ears look like bat wings to me, and the snout also has some batness to it. The only other creature that seems plausible is an elephant with a transplanted nose, but I can’t imagine Paas going for something that would raise so many questions.

Yeah, it’s a bat.

It’s a cut up pumpkin dressed as a bat. Come springtime, I will remember nights like this and miss them terribly.

Among the alternatively suggested uses was the above, inviting us to "make an impression at work, home or school" with something Paas called "Comput-Ears." It’s that level of wordplay that got Fred Basset knocked out of so many newspapers.

I was tempted to check our closets to see if we had any ancient computer monitors left, but we don’t. Or maybe I never bothered to check, because it seemed like a ridiculous amount of effort for foam bat wings. I suppose I could fit them on my current computer, but then I’d have to take the photo in here, and you’d see how filthy my apartment was.

So, just use your imagination. Surely you’ve used it for tougher visuals than foam wings on an old monitor. I know all about your dreams. You disgust me.