Spooky Halloween Tales Told Not from the Crypt but a Suburban Living Room

Halloween was never my favorite holiday. Mainly it was the costumes. As traditional a housewife as my mother may have been, sewing was not her thing. She had a super cool sewing box, with one of those cloth tomatoes that I still have no clue of their purpose, that I never saw her use . Making a costume was never an option.

Those early 70’s store-bought costumes were flammable and non-breathable. They also were non-describable. Was I Caspar the Friendly Ghost or Mary Poppins? The mask that came with it eventually found its true purpose later for bank robbers and scary movie villains. The memory of spending a few hours barely breathing, blinded, and sweating in the un-temperature-relegated material that’s presently contributing to many a landfills’ toxicity can still trigger a nightmare.

Witch Way to the Candy?

When I was little, there must have been a ring of children-targeted bandits that put razor blades in unwrapped candy. So after trick or treating, my parents had to go through my loot and weed out the dangerous goodies. I don’t think I lost any sleep over losing a piece of fruit or hard candy from granny’s candy dish.

There also was a lot of stress worrying about filling the dreaded UNICEF collection boxes we young ones had to carry. Not only were we taking candy, but we also had to ask for money too. I think the beginning of my sales job aversion started here.

House of the Living Dead

Adulthood and parenting brought new challenges to this commercially spooky night.

Being a homeowner in Suburbia for over 20 years, you would think I could decorate a house. I don’t know if it’s because I am Jewish and did not grow up with the yearly Christmas decorating ritual, but I suck at it. As much as I try for a classic rustic jack-o-lanterny feel, I end up with dollar-store kitsch.

My decoration fails could be because I only buy decorations in the Target clearance aisle on November 1st. There is a reason the six-foot cheap plastic pumpkins with the blinking lights and not-fitting lids do not sell. Another reason being I missed the class on how to spread the cotton spider webs, so they don’t look like my laundry when I forget to take the tissues out of my pockets.

I Ain’t Afraid of No Ghost!

As a parent, a great ordeal of Halloween is picking out the kids’ costumes. They have improved a slight smidge since my childhood. For the first few years of their lives, the selection was easy peasy. Whatever shameless marketed character was being foisted on us that year was an easy pick. For four years, my son was Spider-Man, never once watching or reading anything that even remotely mentioned Peter Parker. He acquired his Spidey Sense from the backpacks, bicycles, and dinnerware we owned covered in red and blue webbing.

Once the option of choice entered the picture, the fun started. Staring at the rows and rows of costumes on the Party City wall, I wondered who was the genius that decided to give little kids eight million choices. That alone is a guaranteed future therapy visit.

The other bone I pick is the actual costumes themselves. My latent feminist feathers are ruffled, wondering why these costumes for ten-year-olds look like they should be the go-to wardrobe for brothel residents in the old west circa 1899.

Monster Mash

Trick or Treating with the kids is a hazy blur. I do remember walking the neighborhood pulling a wagon that got heavier and heavier with each candy dump. By the time I got home, I felt like I was run over by twelve trucks and still had to corral the kids away from counting their loot and getting them to bed. I dreaded the years Halloween fell on a weekend. As hard as it was waking the kids up and getting them off to school the following day, I would take that over a weekend in a spooky second. Falling on a school night, the teachers had to deal with the sleep-deprived, sugar-hungover real-life zombies the next day.

No Tricks Just Treats

The idea of donating extra candy to Soldiers overseas is a fabulous plan. However, the problem lies in the collection date. If the loot collectors put a November 1st deadline to donate, all would be perfect. Unfortunately, by the time I drop off the extra candy, most of it has already been added to my hips in the form of 10 pounds of fat.

Until all the candy was finished, I should have abolished bedtimes and let the kids stay up til I crawled into my bed. This way, there would be no sneaking into the candy bags after the kids went to sleep and lying about it the following morning. One of my most creative lies to the kids was, “You must have eaten all the Kit Kat Bars. Have a stale Laffy Taffy.”

I tried buying Halloween candy at a discount early once. That’s just evil marketing. I want to meet the God or Goddess of Willpower that buys candy in early September and still has unopened bags on Hallow’s eve. Even if I can get it on sale in late summer, I will only eat that savings figuratively and literally.

If You’ve Got it…Haunt it!

The first year my kids went off on their own on Halloween, I was a pathetic mess. I spent that first year crying through photos of past years while refilling my wine glass with each ring of the doorbell.
Ultimately I retrieved a little self-dignity by inviting a few of my friends over so we could collectively wax nostalgic over our children’s youth.

Now with both kids in college, I have become the scary lady that lives down the block. Last year I put together a makeshift costume of some old flowered leggings that looked good on Kate Hudson but not so much on me, a stolen purple wig from my daughter, a cowboy hat with the Petron Tequila label on it, and fancied myself a costume. All that did was probably give me the designation mentioned above. So now I sit outside with my husband and give out candy, have a drink, and wish for the good old Peeping Tom days.

Every day is Halloween, isn’t it? For some of us

Tim Burton