October 29, 2004
Remember When Halloween Was Cool?
I'm gonna go totally Grandma on all yer asses today and indulge in some blatant, unapologetic reminiscing. Because I'm old enough (I'll be 35 tomorrow) to remember the days before The Tylenol Scare, when we could take candy from complete strangers -- and sometimes homemade goodies even -- without having to have it all x-rayed.
And because my birthday falls on Devil's Night, I always had costume birthday parties and got to wear my costume twice, and I just have the best memories of Halloween. I always had the best costumes, too. Dad is a mechanical engineer, with hobbies like metalsmithing and carpentry and do-it-yourself firearms, so Halloween was an event.
There was the huge paper maché clown head, which, looking back on, was pretty scary, but that was years before I was stalked by a Ringling Brothers graduate, so I liked it. And it came in handy when my bag alone could not contain all my candy. Oh, glorious candy-filled clown head!
There was the table lamp costume, with actual working lightbulb, swear to God. Table around my waist via suspenders, lampshade on my head, and the man wired his child for electricity. Thank God it didn't rain that year.
But the piece de resistance was Joan of Arc. (Did you hear the choir singing when I said that? Cuz I did.) I didn't even really know anything about her, but I was a girl and I was wearing armor, for Pete's sake! How punk rock was I! There was a black cardboard horse that went around my waist, via suspenders under my aluminum armor. And this was no fem, merry-go-round horse, man. This stallion was fierce! With angry eyes and flairing nostrils! And it had a black curtain around the bottom so you couldn't see my real legs underneath, and there were fake, armored legs attached to the side so it looked like I was sitting astride my noble steed! It was so fucking kewl!
And the jack o' lanterns he made! They were so angry! They terrified me! I was in grade school and literally just scared to death of Dad's pumpkins. (And no, that's not a euphemism for anything, you sick bastards.)
But it was the trick-or-treating I came here to talk about.
Remember the good old days, when if Halloween was on a weekend, there was no facist "official start time", so you could just trick-or-treat ALL DAY LONG? And there was never any official end time, so you could just go until exposure set in, or people ran outta candy. Or the cops yelled at you to "Go the hell home already!"
I grew up in a fairly affluent neighborhood, which sucked when I got ostracized for wearing Lee jeans instead of Jordache (I'll never forgive you, Mother!), but it was disco when it came to trick-or-treating. If we were willing to put forth a little effort and hike to the country club neighborhood, the people there gave away whole candy bars! Not those little "fun-sized" ones (what's fun about less chocolate, I'd like to know). No -- I'm talkin' the normal-sized candy bars.
The rich people also gave out quarters, which was cool because back then (and I'm really dating myself here), it didn't cost much more than that for us to buy a normal-sized candy bar.
Pillowcases were definitely the sack of choice (heh-heh, she said "sack) for the serious trick-or-treater, as they were huge and not prone to rippage. I remember one particularly bountiful year where I actually had to stop home to empty said huge sack. (I'm giggling like a grade schooler now. God, how pathetic.) Good times, man. Good times.
I remember one year, we rang a doorbell, and this nice lady had just pulled a tray of cookies out of the oven. So we actually went into her house to wait for them to cool, and for her to wrap them up for us. And she didn't butcher, poison or molest us! Imagine that!
Nowadays, kids often go to parties instead of -- not in addition to -- trick-or-treating. Or they're accompanied by their parents and go only to the houses of people they know. Being new in our neighborhood (and obviously scary, evil people), we have yet to hear our doorbell ring more than a handful of times on Halloween night, and never after sundown. It's just so lame! My heart breaks for the kids who have never known the thrill of braving the strange house with the scary music playing, or getting egg in their hair, or walking home 2 miles in the rain.
I feel so, so lucky to have grown up during the glory days of trick-or-treating.
So what's the coolest costume you ever wore?