October is my favorite month of the year. In fact, it's not even close. The weather gets a bit crisper, and the leaves start to change colors before falling to the ground. Apples are to be picked, pumpkins to be carved. It gets darker a bit earlier, and waiting patiently at the end, is Halloween.
I used to love that day when I was a kid. I never had a good costume idea, but you didn't need one. It was about candy, not outfoxing your friends. We all had those cheap, plastic masks that were always so tight you could barely breathe. That low-quality rubber band would always break, and you'd spend half the night revealing Batman's true identity. It was pitiful, but you didn't care because there was candy to be had.
You were armed with an old pillowcase (and mocked those with the small, pumpkin-shaped baskets), a flashlight and the knowledge of who gave out the best candy a year ago. You'd venture out in small to medium-sized groups, hitting as many houses on as many streets as possible. The route was the same every year. You were organized and you and your friends gameplanned. "Eat your dinner, lads. Tonight we attack, and you'll need your strength" were the last words you and your friends would say to one another as you walked home from school.
Alas poor Yorick, there's the problem with Halloween these days. Due to the overwhelming fear our society has of the "super-predator", the kids don't get to be kids anymore. They don't get to go trick-or-treating in the traditional way. Instead, they're chauffeured around in Mom's SUV and dropped off door-to-door, because we all know that every child born after 1990, was born without the ability to walk. And don't even think about trick-or-treating during the evening hours. Oh no, all of that is to be done by the light of day. 4-foot tall Darth Vaders are not at all scary at 430 in the afternoon, so thank you Suzy SoccerMom for doing what you can to drain all the fun out of being a kid.
And oh, what fun they are missing. 10 kids frantically scurrying to the next house, 1 or 2 parents armed with a flashlight trailing slowly behind. The crumpling of plastic suits mixed with the snapping of rubber bands creating simultaneous symphonies throughout the streets of cities and towns worldwide.
And when you finally reach the age where it's no longer acceptable to go begging for bite-sized Snickers, you get to cause trouble. Ah, Mayhem, my old friend. When you hit those teen years, you'd do anything for a dozen or so eggs on Halloween night. You'd need a written note from a parent to purchase a dozen brown. The oval cholesterol bombs would vanish from households, and were cleverly stashed in the bushes, along with the toilet paper, hot dogs and whipped cream. Your costume this year: A juvenile delinquent, with bad acne.
The transformation was awkward, as puberty tends to be. However, over the course of a few years, you go from that kid that asked for another 1000 Grand bar, to that little shit who placed a cold hot dog with whipped cream underneath Mr. Johnson's car door handle. Your foray into being a teenage douchebag was sudden, albeit inevitable, and at the time you will think it's the coolest damn thing you will ever do. But man do you hope you don't get caught. You also get to spend the night walking around the town, "t.p." a few trees, bushes and houses, and throw some eggs at the kids in the other cliques. At the end of hte night, you'd go home and lie to your parents. "Yeah, I got hit with some eggs....No, I was just walking home....Are there any 1,000 grand bars left?". (The inner child never leaves, does it?)
And when you reach full-blown adulthood (or fake it, like I do), Halloween completely loses all it's charm in just a few, short years. Your friends throw some parties, where you all try to out-clever each other by going as something so original as a "famous person recently in the news for doing an embarassing thing" or "pop culture phenomenon of the moment"-type costumes. These types of costumes can be funny, but only because of the presence of alcohol. You have these parties for a few years, and you still fondly remember the time you dressed up like the construction worker from the Village People, became inebriated, and attempted to actually fix stuff. You laugh at the time your friends dressed up as the Gorton's fisherman, Richard Simmons (complete with onion-skin short shorts), Papa Smurf and in a kids-sized Batman costume (even though he was 25 at the time).
Then you move into the stage where you can't schedule a party that actually falls on Halloween because so-and-so has a big meeting the next day, or so-and-so can't go because his/her daughter has her dance recital that night, and you pretty much just give up on the whole thing. You've now reached the point where your friends are taking their kids out on Halloween, and thus, the game ends.
So now that I've reached that point where Halloween is another day on the calender, I'm going to make a real effort to enjoy that day this year. Like Eddie Money, I "want to go back...and do it all over", because I genuinely miss those days. I'm not saying I'm going to get dressed up, but I want to carve a pumpkin or two. I want to decorate the Mac Mansion a bit, and eat candy corn until it comes out my ears. But most all, I just want a 1000 Grand bar.
