The Horrors of Halloween

For those loyal two or three readers (I’m only exaggerating slightly) that follow my blog you know that I got to spend several days in the presence of my mother, the Halloween costume genius. I’d love to say that all that creativity trickled down the family tree and dripped into my head, but that would be a lie. In fact, as we were browsing a second hand store my mother was standing across the store holding up articles of clothing for me to admire but I couldn’t see myself wearing the long black satin nightgown or the broomstick skirt that appeared to have been pieced together by color-blind Keebler Elves. Since she is my mother and I try not to hurt her feelings I smiled awkwardly and nodded, holding up a classic white shirt or a black blazer for her to inspect in an effort to remind her that my tastes run decidedly north of “hippy.” It was only after we left that she said, “didn’t you think any of those were good costume possibilities?” I’d obviously missed the point entirely.


Which is why my children tend to go to school with the same Spiderman or Jedi Knight costume that every other slacker mother picked up off the clearance rack at Walmart on the eve of Halloween. We’re also the moms with red bloodshot eyes raking through the bottom of the candy aisle in the middle of the night for trick-or-treat goodies. No one really wants to knock on my door because the Bit-O-Honey’s I give out are traditionally used by Dentists to remove fillings and not considered a treat. Last year I couldn’t find a single bag of candy and had to settle for giving out toothbrushes. Drop a toothbrush into a trick-or-treat bag and you’re treated to the most disgusted look a five-year-old can muster. Maybe I should give up and follow Walter Matthau’s lead in “Grumpy Old Men” and give the kids all the junk I don’t want. He gave out laundry detergent and his stapler. I could hand out pants that I bought thinking that I’d actually lose enough weight to fit into them or kitchen gadgets that I was given for Christmas. Why doesn’t someone teach men a class to cover the basics like “appliances do not count as gifts” and “when we ask you how we look, we are fishing for a compliment and we do not want you to tell us that the skirt looks a little too tight?”

It’s obvious that Halloween makes me a little crazy. But then so does Christmas and Easter, and any other holiday that requires I purchase something special, bake something special or travel. I want to be Martha Stewart with her stylishly painted glitter pumpkins and punch with floating jawbreaker eyeballs for the party and a clever Lego-made-from-a-box as my costume. My reality includes owning a pumpkin carving kit that features a pattern for creating “Backstreet Boys” faces, serving sprite with a few drops of red food coloring and squeezing into my 80’s power suit with killer shoulder pads and calling it a costume.

But all is not lost, even for the hopelessly challenged. A couple of years ago I took a darling picture of my kids in front of a spider web wrapped porch with eight glowing pumpkins. It’s so cute that I have it framed. And you have to look pretty closely to realize that my kids aren’t standing on their porch. Actually, I snapped the shot as they were trick-or-treating at a stranger’s home. Or maybe it was Martha’s house—hard to tell.