英语播客 A Cup of English Friendly or scary?

As I drive around town, I find myself saying the occasional "oooo!", "ahhh!", or "oh?!" Do you know why? There are Halloween decorations all over the place, and they make a real impression. There seem to be two approaches to decorating for Halloween: friendly or scary. Personally, I prefer friendly. The time of year leads me to decorate with themes of pumpkins, Autumn leaves, and the harvest. Okay, I throw in the odd friendly ghost here and there, a black cat, or some fake bats. But you can find a pleasant version of those things. Other people, however, choose to really scare. Perhaps they don't get frightened easily. Some of the houses near us are quite shocking. There is one with a huge skull picture in the window that is pulling an awful face, and then outside, on the front lawn are fake tombstones everywhere. I suppose it's all a bit of fun; it just depends on your taste. My oldest son seemed to enjoy the dark side of things a few years ago. One Halloween night, when all of my children dressed up and we took them out to trick or treat, he chose to go as the Grim Reaper, you know, Death. He wore a long black hooded cape, and had a mask on like 'the scream' by Edvard Munch. The rest of us were friendly looking creatures, and so he stood out in contrast. We stopped by a local church that had free hotdogs and lots of candies for Halloween night, and as we went from booth to booth, people would look at my son twice, the first time in shock, the second time in horror. On another occasion, he was dressed like Darth Vader from Star Wars, which wasn't bad at all I thought. However, he had a battery run voice pack that had some pre-recorded sayings by Darth Vader. I didn't pay much attention to it at all, until we got to the church parking lot, and the kids were filling up their candy buckets at the booths. Hudson turned on his voice pack, and you could hear, " You don't know the power of the dark side!" I'm sure some people found it distasteful or inappropriate; I actually thought it was hilarious. And Hudson, like the rest of the kids, was only concerned about getting as much candy as possible.

Grammar notes.

Related vocabulary: to make an impression, the odd....here and there, version, hooded.

1. He made a real impression on me; he was polite and very helpful.

2. You can see the odd farmhouse here and there in the valley.

3. The new version of 'Thriller' is not at all as good as the original.

4. My sweater is hooded, so I can keep my head warm when I go out in the snow.