The Annual Pumpkin Pic

Let's admit it. There are some annual traditions that are more about the picture than the experience. As much as I love apple picking, pumpkin picking wasn't one of my top Fall activities. It was always so cold. Bundled up in coats and scarves, just my eyes showing, stumbling around the vines and uneven earth in search of a heavy, dirty orange vegetable I'd have to lug back to the car. Each year ended with a photo of my siblings and I sitting on giant pumpkins looking sullen. That image, that was what it was all about. 

When I first moved to LA and was feeling a little homesick I tried to replicate this piece of home. But tank tops and flip flops have their own problems in the pumpkin patch. You aren't stepping over vines because the pumpkins didn't grow there - they were brought there in an attempt to replicate a farm environment. It was a combination of everything that sucked about the experience in my childhood combined with none of the upside. Forget that. 

I stopped driving an hour away for a faux experience and started buying my pumpkins on the cheap at Trader Joes. Then I had a kid. Kids make you want to capture a piece of your own childhood. Back to the pumpkin patch. 

But this time I decided to embrace the LA of it all. If it's really all about the picture of your kid holding a pumpkin there is no better place to get that than Mr. Bones. It's like a real live 'celebrities are people too' section straight out of a tabloid magazine. In LA, it's common to find yourself just on the edge of frame of what will inevitably be captioned as a photo of a starlet in her natural habitat doing something completely normal just like you and me. 

Mr. Bones is one giant photo op. Which is perfect because it's also the only pumpkin patch I know of with a designated area for paparazzi - and valet parking. You can easily drop $50 in a half an hour there on $7 pony rides, face painting, petting zoos and Lavender-Honey sno-cones. Plus, of course, the pumpkins perfectly organized by size and color. 

My pumpkin picking experience

Amongst the regular folk dressed in their just rolled out of bed best are the perfectly put together. The moms with every hair in place and their designer bags and jeans. They look better kneeling in the hay arguing with their toddlers who want to feed the animals but don't want to go into the petting zoo than I do at a special event. But in a way they have to, because their annual photo op will not be taken by them on their iphone - it will be taken by the 30 paparrazi with their telephoto lenses. Their annual tradition will show up online less than four hours later with hashtags and links to every designer item they are wearing. Which is really the only reason one would wear a lace dress to a pumpkin patch. Otherwise, you seem insane. But it's not insane here. It's perfectly manufactured normal. 

Jessica Alba's pumpkin picking experience.

The rest of us will struggle to get our kids to sit still for one second to get that shot. One dad asked me to take a photo of him and his kids with his fancy camera. He seemed slightly irritated that I only got six shots off - but dude, I only have so much time to dedicate to your memory before my kid has a melt down and I ruin the chance of getting one of my own.