GAIL WHITE The scariest thing? You relate to my parenting shortfalls

As ghosts and goblins wander around this Halloween, trick-or-treating and yelling "Boo!," I have found creatures more scary than Freddy Krueger.
You!
My column titled, "It's official: My mind has turned to jelly" received a flood of letters and e-mails from readers.
Truly, one of the most comforting realizations in life is knowing that you are not the "only one." Thanks to your response, I now know that most of us are walking around in a sort of mindless state at least some of the time.
So while you're looking out for little goblins hiding behind trees and witches riding brooms tonight, I might suggest you keep an even closer watch on those in plain clothes. They're the really scary ones!
"I have done what you did with calling your child by the dog's name," admits Pat Zoccali of Warren. "The one thing I do quite often is try and turn the television channel with the phone and try to call someone on the remote."
This Halloween, if you knock at the Zoccali's and the door never opens, check the window. Pat may be answering your knock there.
Meshing approach
While some of us parents deteriorate into calling our children by the dog's name, others develop a meshing approach to the brain loss problem.
My co-worker, David Wilkinson, remembers his mother using this method.
"My name is David. My brother's name is James. Simple enough, right?" David says with a tone of disgust in his voice. "Javid is what she called us."
As a single, childless male, David does not understand this inability to call a child by their given name. As a parent of four, I find the method fascinatingly useful -- a coping skill of sorts.
For some parents, the Rolodex in their brain just does not have enough cards for all their children. My husband, Pat, was the youngest of five boys. His father's brain Rolodex only had four cards. Until the day he died he called Pat "Russ," the fourth son's name.
Tonight, while you're going door to door, be sure to keep track of your little monsters. This is the most frighteningly, horrifying aspect of this mind-loss nightmare.
In "turned to jelly" I wrote about how I forgot to take my friend's son home after a football game. When I realized my error, I ran to the car screaming louder than a Friday the 13th audience.
"It was a panic I had not felt since my fourth child was a baby and I pulled out of the driveway and left him sitting on the kitchen table in his car seat,' I wrote.
A particularly scary friend of mine, who I won't identify for obvious reasons, had one better than that. Sixteen years ago when his daughter was a baby, he not only pulled out of the driveway, he went all the way to the store and back before he realized he had forgotten her.
"She was asleep the whole time," he assures me, but there is still a quake in his voice. She's almost made it to adulthood. He's hoping his brain will hold out until then.
Tearful confession
Carol Gesacion of Boardman has lost all hope that her brain will hold out. Like mine, hers has simply taken its leave.
"I actually had to wipe tears from my eyes when you told the story about leaving Ben behind," Carol writes in an e-mail. "A couple of years ago, I did the very same thing.
"My son was a senior on the Boardman Baseball team, and they were playing a playoff game at Cene Park. My husband picked up his 80-year old mother and brought her to the game ... I was to take my mother-in-law home.
"She doesn't get around very well, so I told her to take a seat on the bench outside the gate in the parking lot and I would go get the car. I walked to the car and drove home. Apparently, she waved at me as I drove by."
Her son, the baseball player, found his grandmother on the bench and gave her a ride home.
When Carol called to apologize, she expected an angry retort.
Instead her mother-in-law responded, "Honey, you just have too much to do and too much on your mind."
Pearls of wisdom for all of us scary people.
gwhite@vindy.com