The Horrors of Halloween

This is the edition of my blog where you all slowly begin to understand the inner me.  You see where I’m coming from.  You see where I’m going.  This is the edition where I let it all hang out.  This is the one where you undoubtedly have a little creeper of a tear welling up in the back recesses of your eyes.  You’ll want to cover me with a warm blanket of comfort and caring – swaddling your feelings for me in a gentle embrace the next time you see me.

For my friends, here is the edition of this globally-recognized (and locally ignored) blog where I explain to you why I hate the crap out of Halloween.

Blasphemy!

Egads!

Feigned Indifference!

It all started when I was about 5 or 6.  In those days Christmas was all about the Sunday School Christmas play.  You plan it for weeks, dread it for weeks, and then it’s over in the blink of an eye – soon to be followed by Christmas presents.  It’s like all of Christmas is geared to that 30 minutes of agony, and your reward for living through it as a child is the presents.  At least that’s how I looked at Christmas.  Anyway, my brother was three years older and obviously a MUCH better thespian than I – for he landed one of the four starring roles in the Gethsemane Lutheran Church, Fort Wayne, Indiana production of “Three Mice and a Cat With a Bell on its Tail” – or something like that.  He obviously was not talented enough to be the cat, so he was cast as one of the mice.  The only catch was he didn’t have a costume – apparently it was MYOC.  So my wonderful mother made him a mouse outfit that was head to toes mousy.  He was completely wrapped up in gray cloth and whiskers and a long annoying tail.  He looked like a mouse – so I guess it was a good costume.  Long story short (is that even still possible?), he rocked the role of the little rodent and was the talk of the whine and  cheese party afterwards.  And no, I don’t know why three mice and a bell had anything to do with Christmas.

Flash forward three years and Halloween was coming up.  I saw a really cool astronaut costume that I would DIE for.  So my parents look around and say….no.  Simply no.  Instead, they hauled out the same moth-ridden, brother-worn mouse costume that looked somewhat like this:

I DO have a picture somewhere of it – but I can’t find it.  That would be Creeper #1 if I could find the picture in question.  So anyway, I cried, complained, carried-on, and caused chaos to no avail.  I was sent out to the wild streets of Indiana with a 3-year old handmade mouse costume.  I felt ridiculous.  Even worse, the gang of Hoosiers that I hung out with whom were all dressed as really cool astronauts laughed incessantly at me and caused me great unrest.  I went home early with literally my tail tucked between my legs.

I didn’t go out for Halloween the next two years.  I was too ashamed and humiliated.  But through the prodding of parents and the eternally damning social pressure of my peers – I decided that THIS would be the year I make a triumphant Halloween return.  The story in the papers would report me as the ‘Hoosier that Hustled Halloween’.  There MAY even be a ticker tape parade down the streets of Fort Wayne.  That had never happened before – even when Johnny Appleseed was making his way through the town streets.  If it was today, there would have been 2 million views of me on YouTube and I would have been shared on Facebook around the world just as much as a cuddly kitten in the mouth of a German Shepherd is shared today.

So THIS was the year.  I decided to go as my favorite thing – a baseball player.  I put on my Detroit Tigers baseball cap, slipped on a baseball glove and proudly walked out the door.  I joined my local groupies who glanced at me a little odd but said nothing.  We gang-walked to the first house and bounded up their front steps.  The doorbell was rung and the obligatory ‘Trick or Treat’ was merrily shouted.  Henry Homeowner came out and looked proudly at all the little children.  Then his eye fell upon the littlest baseball player (prepare for Creeper #2).  He looked directly at me and said ‘What are YOU supposed to be?’  I meekly lifted the bill of my cap and said ‘A baseball player sir….I just want some of your wonderful candy…. please can you share a little?’ (note – that statement may be somewhat embellished to bring about Creeper #3).  He looked at me for another second and then burst out laughing, roaring “well, you won’t get any candy HERE if you don’t wear a costume…’ and gave EVERY SINGLE OTHER PERSON a piece of candy except me.  We all turned away from the door and I defeatedly and lacklusterly slinked off home after the first house – never to be seen at Halloween again (Creeper #4).

So that’s why with ALL of the invites to Halloween parties I get today, with everything going on, you will NEVER see me in a costume.  Halloween was ruined for once and for all by grumpy Mr. Homeowner (name changed because I have no idea of his real name).  I now just move straight from the Johnny Appleseed Festival (Fort Wayne tradition) to Thanksgiving and try to ignore that the end of October ever existed.

So go ahead and share a summary Creeper with me.  I wish I could say I felt better about it now that I’ve shared it….but I don’t.   I feel like a complete Halloween-ie.  All because my brother was a better mouse-actor than me.

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