Ahhhh, Superdog. Here we are again. Everybody’s favorite holiday… except mine. I don’t hate it or anything… well, maybe I hate it… no, that’s not true, I don’t hate it. I’m just not that great at it. It just wasn’t that big of a holiday for us when we were kids so I never really got excited about it. Not that I’m really all that great at the holidays that WERE a big deal for us when I was a kid… I can’t make all that awesome Christmas candy, I’ve never stuffed a turkey, and I fill Easter baskets with Dollar Tree trinkets. But Halloween especially, I’m just not that great at preparing and/or participating in. Can’t carve pumpkins, not creative with costumes, hate all the sugar buzz.
That’s a lie.
I actually hate SHARING the candy with all the kids. That’s MY candy, I paid for it, mine, mine, mine!!
Okay, I’m a bad adult.
Anyway, I remember Halloweens as a kid. It was always more about the costume contest in school than it was about the trick-or-treating and candy. We lived way out in the country so it was a pretty complicated deal for us to get any trick-or-treating in. We had to drive all the way into town (three miles… whooooo...), and then there was the fact that this was the 80s and you never knew if there were going to be tacks in the M&Ms or razor blades in the KitKats, you get it. So trick-or-treating was usually not a part of the whole Halloween thing.
The costume contest, however- that was always a big deal. In second grade, because I wore glasses (and was the only one pretty much the whole school that did), we decided to dress me up as an old lady. So add a head scarf, a cane, and a long dress, and I was an old lady. Odd. Odder still, for some reason I thought that all old ladies were grumpy, so the real crux of my costume depended on me walking around hunched over with a very grumpy look on my face, waving my cane and croaking out, “I hate fill-in-the-blank!!” “I hate kitty cats!!” “I hate Halloween candy!!” “I hate standing in line!!” And since my grumpiness was considered part of my costume, nobody shut me up. Most memorable was the time I saw our principal walking down the hall, so in front of my teacher, God, and the entire second grade, I waved my cane triumphantly in the air and screeched, “I hate you, Mr. Stump!!” I think I was a bit of a classroom hero after that one, but not surprisingly, my teacher- one Mrs. Stump- put the kibosh on my bad mood after that one. I did not win the contest.
I don’t remember many other costumes, except for fifth grade. I was a pack of Extra Spearmint chewing gum. We took a big ol’ cardboard box, spray-painted it dark blue, and cut a couple eye holes out of it so I could walk around. This is most memorable for two reasons, the first being how late we stayed up on October 30th putting all the finishing touches on the box. It was ridiculous how late I stayed up that night. Also, it was ridiculous that my parents didn’t notice what we were watching on TV as we were painting- one of those made-for-TV movies that happened to be a true story about a kid named David whose father kidnapped him, carted him off to a hotel room, doused him and the bed he was sleeping in in lighter fluid, and lit him up. Apparently David lived a horrible face-scarred life, or something… I don’t know, I was ten. I never really got over the picture of the little boy screaming in his bed. (Happy Halloween.) The other reason I remember this particular year is because that year the costume contest was an eerie harbinger of the high school Junior Miss pageant, where Michelle Irelan narrowly beat me out by wearing a spandex and doing gymnastics whilst my more artistic, deserving performance brought up a close second. In 5th grade, Michelle Irelan dressed in spandex as a girl walking on her hands, while my more artistic, deserving box of gum brought up a close second. Who says history doesn’t repeat itself?
One time- and only one time- Mom took us trick-or-treating downtown. My brother was determined to trick-or-treat, and I, being all young and impressionable, was convinced to join his whining campaign until Mom agreed to take us. Erik put on his classic 80s Batman costume, and since we had bought one costume that meant I got the homemade one. Mom put a little red dress, lacy socks, and a white apron and one of those puffy little white caps on me, and I was Strawberry Shortcake. Tada. To add to the illusion, she drew little red freckles all over my cheeks with a lip liner pencil. This was a great idea, except that I was, well, four. And you know what happened. I was four! My face itched. I scratched. Freckles smeared. Mom repaired. This happened at least four times before we even left the house. Since it took, oh, say, an hour to even snap a picture without Strawberry Smearface showing up, mom’s nerves were a little more than frazzled by the time we drove off. A half a mile away, I scratched my face. Again. Mom pulled over and with some choice words fixed my freckles. Again. Her attitude during that facial repair session was enough to frighten my hands into a frozen position for the next half hour or so- just enough time to get us started knocking on doors, but not enough time to get it done. Apparently my face was awfully itchy that night because by the end of the candy-collecting session, thanks to the little white apron, the little white cap, and the little red freckles now smudged like rouge all over my cheeks, I looked a lot more like a little French whore than I did Strawberry Shortcake.
No more trick-or-treating for us.
Strawberry was another creepy little future- teller: in high school the only thing I could think of to do for a costume was to steal a color guard dress and put on a lot of makeup and go as a skease. (This was more a knock on color guard girls than it was a real costume.) Since then, this year is the first year that I can remember having to dress up in any way, shape, or form. (Except while I was working at the temp agency-I sometimes put the numbers 98.6 on my shirt and said I was dressed as a temp. I don’t think that counts, although it was big humor in the business, I swear.) But this year, Quarterhorse is playing a Halloween gig up in North Plains, so I had to do something to blend in to all the crazies that are coming out that night. The only idea I could come up with was some face paint.
It’s a four-hour gig.
Gets awful hot in there… I spend a lot of time wiping my face because I get hot during gigs.
This could be interesting. Keeping with my woman-of-the-night theme, I’ll probably have smeared all my face paint into some geisha-like mess by the end of the evening. I gotta go buy me a mask…
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