BOO!(?)

Hey, ghouls and 'goyles! Also, hello to the guys and girls. Happy Halloween! What are you going to be tonight? A girl in a Women's Studies class I was in once posited that everyone goes as themselves on Halloween. It's a provocative point, and one that seems trenchant (or at least amusing) in the context of cross-dressing frat boys in which it was made, but I just can't for the life of me figure out how to expand the theory to apply to the guy who shows up as an M&M. I don't really like most people very much, but I am willing to give M&M guy the benefit of the doubt on this one, that there is more inside his soul than a peanut.

In case not doing it will cause something terrible to happen to those they love, some people brush their teeth for exactly 123 seconds. And similarly, in case you were wondering, my favorite Halloween (in retrospect) is when I was four or five years old. I went as a hobo (Correction: No I didn't. See below.), because there is really nothing funnier than dirty homeless urchin children. But that isn't what was most awesome about it. Nate went as a pirate, complete with an eyepatch, skull-and-crossbones hat, and painted-on mustache. Obviously we cut a fucking adorable figure, but as the night wore on, it became apparent that Nate was struggling. He was stumbling around the entire time and falling repeatedly - and not in some precocious attempt to portray a pirate loaded up on mead and opium because he wants to forget the treachery of the sea. My Dad was obviously perplexed, but when we got home Nate was fine, and my parents just chalked it up to some combination of the dark night and the lack of depth perception with the eyepatch and general fatigue from walking around with short little 2-year-old legs. It was only a few years later, at Nate's first eye exam, that my parents learned that Nate had, and probably always had, like 20-500 vision or something in his right eye, and was walking around that night with an eyepatch over his left eye, blind as a blind pirate's blind parrot's devotion. Which is just hilarious to me. I guess my parents kicked themselves for missing it at the time, but hindsight never wears an eyepatch.

                                              

Left: Nate as a fearsome 3-foot-tall blind pirate. I imagine that he tells all the other pirates that he puts the patch over the eye that works just to give the sorry scurvy dogs a fighting chance. Then he kills them anyway. Right: Me as a fearsome 3-and-1/2-foot-tall hobo wearing man-sized clothes and a fedora. I have retroactively named this character Basement Mraz. Also, when I went to get these pictures, I discovered that I actually went as a clown the Halloween Nate was a pirate. But I really don't want pictures of me as a clown out in the world, no matter the age or circumstances. A vagrant I can deal with, especially since I'll probably be one for real someday. If you want pictures of me as a clown then you'll either have to steal mine or drug me and dress me up as one. But let's be honest: you don't give a shit about it.

I will admit, though, that it's been at least a decade since Halloween was my kind of holiday. After retiring from trick-or-treating at the reasonable age of 13, I for years looked down upon the postpubescent dipshits who tossed on half-assed costumes and ran around the neighborhood carrying pillowcases, just daring adults who were shorter than they were to deny them their fun-sized Twix bars. It was just weird to see teenagers - who otherwise devote so much time to looking cool and independent - willfully engaging in an activity in which they must roam the streets surrounded by mommies and daddies shepherding their snot-costumed kids from house to house to obesity. And I hated that the teenagers would travel in packs and laugh their Jimbo Jones laughs like they were only doing it to be hilarious and ironic. Pretend all you want, but you and I both know, motherfucker, that when you get home tonight you're going to pour out that pillowcase on your bed and sort the contents just like you did when you were eight years old: full-sized vs. fun-sized; chocolate vs. non-; Snickers over here, Butterfingers here, Spree over there, Good 'N' Plenty in the trash. So come on. Give me a break. (Give me a break. Break me off a piece of that BULLSHIT. Boom.)

But recently I've softened my stance, as two simple facts of life have become more clear (or at least relevant) to me: kids can wring happiness out of almost any situation, and adults out of almost nothing. If Halloween were set up just to maximize everyone's general happiness above baseline levels, the kids would be handing shit out to adults - candy or chocolate liqueur or coupons for free haircuts or whatever it is that might help them to forget their day-to-day miseries and feel, for at least a few hours, that life is something more than a cruel vitality sieve. And if the kids feel left out, the adults can just throw them an ill-conceived party the next day, and they'll dig it. Because these are the same people who can pump pure distilled joy out of shit like finding eggs hidden under couch cushions or going to Casa Bonita or driving through the car wash. They will make it work. So it's cool, Halloween. Just because I got an irreversible Halloween vasectomy doesn't mean that the postpubecent shouldn't be able to use you as an excuse to make some funbabies. Or real babies. Or punch.

So Happy Halloween to all - M&Ms and Eminems and slutty RNs and slutty M&Ms alike (I'm looking at you, green one!).