TGI Halloween

I’ve mentioned before that Halloween is a big deal in our household. We’ve been busy with preparations for the big night and for various celebrations we usually attend.

We don’t get as many trick or treaters as we used to, which kind of makes me sad. When we first moved here, I had to buy several large bags of candy and would have two hours straight of heavy trick or treating traffic. I’d usually run out earlier than the goblins would stop coming and we’d have to be those people that turned off all the lights and closed up the house.

These days, I don’t even go through a whole bag and a lot of the houses on the street don’t even bother turning on their lights and making the pretense that they’ll hand out candy.

Even though he’s fifteen, this will be the first year Shane doesn’t go trick or treating. I went ahead and let him continue trick or treating even though he was “too old” for it. I’m of the opinion that I’d rather know where he is and what he’s doing than the alternative. I’m ok with him staying a big kid for as long as he wants to. There’s plenty of time to grow up and adulthood is long and sometimes awful. Trick or treat away, my teenage friends! Just don’t partake in any douchebaggery, ok?

My own trick or treating days got cut short the year I turned eleven. That was the year some people in Chicago died from Tylenol that was laced with cyanide. My mother (and apparently a lot of other mothers) decided there was no need to send their children out to take candy from strangers when clearly the whole world had gone to Hell in an Acetaminophen hand basket.

If any of you millennials were wondering why you have to get through three seals, give a password, and turn around in a circle twice to get into your OTC headache meds, you can thank the madman who decided to poison Tylenol back in 1982. I can thank him for ending the ritual of free candy that would last me until Christmas.

To be fair, though, I think my parents were just looking for an excuse to have to end the yearly ritual of unlocking the front gate that stayed locked 364 days a year, preventing ANYONE from ringing our front bell (we came in and out of the house through the garage). It also ended the yearly ritual of my mother having to walk around the neighborhood with us in the dark while fighting over the fact that she always made us wear a coat over our costumes, thus ruining the effect. And my father no longer had to worry about having his evening TV shows interrupted by the ringing doorbell he was unaccustomed to having to answer, thus requiring him to get up from his Archie Bunker chair.

I think I’m starting to understand where my anti-social tendencies come from.

Anyway, in addition to decorating and buying candy for the scant trick or treaters we will have this year, we’ve been invited to attend two different Halloween celebrations. This, of course, necessitates buying Halloween costumes.

In normal households, this means everyone gets one costume each.

Our household is not normal.

The problem is, we usually decide on one thing and then change our minds at the last minute. I had decided on being a dark angel but then I saw a zombie bride and liked it. I bought the zombie bride and then decided again to do the dark angel, so I ordered one on Amazon and they sent the wrong size. Off to the Halloween store again and they were out of my size so I had to pick something that I could use with the wings and halo…and ended up with two more costumes.

That’s four altogether, for those keeping count.

I told The Husband Dude I would wear a different one to each party and one to hand out candy or wear next year, but the truth is, I’ll probably end up buying new ones next year too.

It’s a problem, I know.

THD doesn’t care, though. He owns too many masks to count and has a pretty good collection of costumes too. One of his favorite activities is to paint his face in different ways throughout October and post pictures on Facebook. I’m thinking next year for the blog maybe we’ll break out all our costumes and post pictures every day in October. I’m already looking forward to it!

Obviously, it runs in the family. When Shane was about three years old, he couldn’t make up his mind what he wanted to be. THD bought him a Buzz Lightyear costume and my mother ended up buying him a Woody costume. In the end, he went as Spiderman (which he ended up doing for the next five years). It’s ok, though. He always loved to play dress up (gee, wonder where he gets that from) and he wore out all of his costumes by wearing them on a near daily basis, until he finally outgrew them.

Clearly, he is his parents’ child. He also hasn’t changed much. This year, he wanted a “Jason” mask for Friday the 13th and I think THD indulged him and bought him a Freddy Kreuger claw too. For Halloween, he couldn’t decide

between Rick from “Rick and Morty” or Pennywise from “It”, so he’s doing a hybrid of both, wearing a lab coat over the Pennywise costume and the Rick wig.

He’s nothing if not unique!

It always makes me a little sad when Halloween is finally over. There’s something disappointing and sort of melancholy to me about waking up November 1 and seeing the decorations hanging there on the front porch, looking out of place with the rising sun.

One of the best memories I have is leaving a Halloween party when I was twenty-five. It was in an older part of town where the houses just naturally look haunted with their long porches and tall columns. My friend and I left the party right at midnight. I’ll never forget the walk to our car.

Everything was quiet and still, except for the Halloween decorations blowing in the breeze. The street was abandoned except for the jack-o-lanterns glowing from some of the front porches.

It was one of those moments we all have from time to time, where you’re doing something quite ordinary but a feeling of tranquility comes over you and you wish you could freeze that moment and that feeling forever. It was one of those moments where I was young, single and felt like I had my whole life ahead of me. I remember standing there by the car, feeling the breeze and smelling the smoke from someone’s chimney, dressed in some silly costume I had put together at the last minute…and I just wanted to capture that moment forever.

To this day, I still like to go outside after the Trick or Treaters have all gone home and I stand for a moment on the front porch, enjoying the total darkness we don’t usually have on the street. Normally, people have their front lights on for security but on Halloween, everyone who is done handing out candy is forced to turn off their lights so the stragglers don’t ring their doorbells. I don’t know why I like to go out there and do that, but I think I’ve spent the last twenty years trying to recapture that moment on the street with my friend. Sometimes I can close my eyes and catch just a whiff of that chimney smoke in the breeze, and I let the quiet settle into my bones.

For some, that might be odd or creepy. For me, it’s like a battery recharge. A rare moment of total tranquility.

As I write this, we’re trying to get in some final movies for the holiday. We just finished watching Trick or Treat from 1986. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a Halloween/Heavy Metal themed movie. Not a hit at all, but has probably become somewhat of a cult classic. It stars Marc Price, who at the time played a character named Skippy in the show Family Ties. There were also guest appearances by Gene Simmons of KISS and Ozzy Osbourne. The soundtrack is awesome and still holds up today. It’s a “B” movie, to be sure, but it’s so bad it’s good.

The one we’re watching right now is not really Halloween themed, but definitely a “B” movie. Or C movie. Or possibly a D.

It’s called KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park and it is the purest definition of “Craptacular”. When KISS were at the height of their popularity in 1978, they decided to make a made for TV movie.

In an amusement park.

With a really low budget.

And worse special effects.

And stunt doubles that even with KISS makeup looked nothing like the guys in KISS.

With Hanna-Barbera, the same production company that produced The Flinstones and other cartoons you probably know.

CRAPTACULAR.

The only thing that could possibly be worse is the Star Wars Holiday Special that aired on TV in 1978 and featured Bea Arthur, among others. The rumor is that Harrison Ford showed up drunk every day to the set because he was so embarrassed to be participating in such a turd-fest. That’s pretty much how the members of KISS feel about Phantom.

I would be remiss in not mentioning my best friend B.J., from high school. I inducted her into the KISS Army and once she was onboard, I introduced her to KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park. She told me not long ago that she still has to break out that movie occasionally and watch it as well.

Some things are just too crappy to die.

She and I also went to see Trick or Treat together in the theater when it came out, so I guess you could say we had front row seats to a lot of bad movies together.

Incidentally, I had to ask B.J.’s permission to mention her in this post. We discussed back and forth whether she wanted me to use her real name or a pseudonym and ended up having this conversation:

B.J.: Wow. I’m going to be internet famous. Not sure about the name…on the one hand the statute of limitations is up on anything we did but on the other hand it could be fun to have an alias.

Me: We didn’t break too many laws, did we?

B.J.: I don’t think so. And we never got caught so…

Note: I’m pretending I don’t know what she’s talking about. Deniability is my best defense.

As we wind down Halloween 2017, I’m filled with some great memories and am sure to make new ones. I’m not looking forward to that walk down our front porch on Wednesday morning when the decorations look so sad and will be coming down soon. However, one of the celebrations we’re going to is a “Hangover After Halloween” party that some of our friends throw every year. It’s one last costume party the weekend after Halloween, and it’s usually a good one. These friends start turning their home into a haunted house some time in August or September and the attention to detail is amazing. So, at least there’s that.

No matter what you’re doing this All Hallow’s Eve, I hope you’re safe and have fun.

Leave a comment with your favorite Halloween memory. I’d love to read your stories!