Here's my Halloween rant, but first, a word about yesterday:
When I got to school this morning, I made a bunch of these and hung them around the library:
And then as the day progressed, I started to wonder if it was the perfume after all. First, I found out that there was a truck parked right outside my window yesterday, where they working on something, and that it was running all day, with the exhaust backing right up into our vent. Swell. Then, Colleague and I began to smell something weird today -- maybe mildew or mold, maybe something from the sinkdrain in her office -- and she totally got sick and even lost her voice. We called in the maintenance folk, and although they believed us, they couldn't smell it themselves. Then I remembered smelling mildew or something weird last month sometime that made me sick then, although not sick enough to go home.
Have I ever mentioned that I work in the only high school in the United States that was built during World War II? Heaven knows what is in those walls and pipes. So maybe it's just the building making me sick.
Anyway, I came home this afternoon a bit queasy and have been lying down ever since, totally ignoring the repeat ringing of the doorbell. Because
Whatever Scrooge is to Christmas, I am becoming to Halloween. I loved it when I was a kid, and even to some degree when my kids were small. I made almost all their costumes myself, from the unicorn (it was adorable) to the big pink crayon (boy, did she hate that one.) Times change.
First, it annoys me to be disturbed an irregular intervals during the afternoon after work. One year, I decided to pass the time cleaning (my first mistake) since I could stop and start that to answer the door. I got warm, I put on a sleeveless shirt. Then at one point I answered the doorbell, stepped onto the screened in porch we used to have, pulled the door closed behind me so the cats wouldn't get out, handed out some candy and realized that I had just locked myself out of the house. And it was cold outside.
I came in through the bathroom window. It was not melodic. It was life-threatening. Even the two cats, standing there watching me come through the tiny window, couldn't believe I was doing it.
And all the tiny little trick-or-treaters who haven't a clue what's going on. Here's a baby dressed as ... something, how does he even know it's not the same as his everyday clothes? And there's mommy and daddy, always telling him not to talk to strangers, standing on the sidewalk and forcing to go up by himself and knock on a stranger's door? How scary is that?
And at school, where it's a senior privelege to dress up on Halloween, they made the obligatory announcement Monday morning that no costume is to include weapons, or appear dangerous or questionable in any way, or denigrate any individual or ethnic group in any way. And have fun!
And now, the decorations. Maybe it's just me. The whole harvest motif is charming. The first time I saw the flattened witch plastered to a tree, I thought it was clever. It's the turning your lawn into a graveyard I don't get.
Now, whatever it is y'all are doing for Halloween, well that's fine, and I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. But what's with the legs sticking up out of the lawn? One pair, well okay, it says something. Twenty pair? It says you didn't know when to stop.
Headstones? How do you explain to your little children what these are for? How do you get them to understand what's going on at an actual cemetery?
"Oh those are real dead people, dear, all lying under the ground. At home, we're just pretending that there are dead people lying under the front lawn."
Uh, Family Services, please? On speed-dial?
Five
1. What was your first Halloween costume?
The first one I remember is that I was a little Dutch girl with a lace cap. I loved this costume! I think I was four or five. Someone must have given it to us, because Shirl did not make Halloween costumes. (But she had other fine qualities.) Mostly I wore those awful Ben Cooper plastic apron type things, where if you were Raggedy Ann, there was a picture of Raggedy Ann on the front and the words Raggedy Ann. I never understood this type of thing, but it's what I got. It's also why I always made real costumes for my kids.
2. What was your best costume and why?
Except for the Dutch girl, I can't remember liking any costume I ever wore. My best costume, however, is the bunny I made for R's first Halloween. She wore it for two years. (I made it big.) Then my niece wore it once. Then a neighbor borrowed it. Then K wore it twice. Helluva costume. It's still in the house somewhere. The girls will probably fight over it when I'm dead, but I hope not before it's been worn by a grandchild, or two, or several.
3. Did you ever play a trick on someone who didn't give you a treat?
Never.
4. Do you have any Halloween traditions? (ie: Family pumpkin carving, special dinner before trick or treating, etc.)
Not so much, except the homemade costumes. Some were very clever, and some were clever but the kids hated them. K, for example, could not sit down as a Hershey's kiss (it was a simplicity pattern) and R wanted desperately to be Judy Jetson, and she did look just like her, but no one recognized that's who it was.
For six or seven years, K named her pumpkin Emily, every year. Emily, then Emily the Second, then Emily the Third, and so on.
5. Share your favorite scary story...real or legend!
Not a fan of the scary. I wouldn't tell it well even if I had one.
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I'm watching The Golden Girls, of course
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Sweet Sorrow - 06.12.2007
So ... - 12.19.2006
Christmastime Is Near - 12.18.2006
Fifteen Years - 12.17.2006
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