1978: I am a robot with a cardboard-box body and arms and legs made of accordioned outflow hose from a clothes dryer. I walk the residential streets of Utah's Hill Air Force Base with my father and sister, plastic jack-o-lantern in hand, exhilarated beyond rationality by the other specters, spooks and pirates running amok in the near-freezing twilight. I return home with more candy than my eyes can take in (and an apple and a box of fucking dental floss, for the love of God), eat two-thirds of it, and spend the night in the fetal position, wracked with cramps and breathing shallowly, rather than get up and glut the toilet with my folly.
1982: It's a few hours before dark. I am making my way to the front door of a friend's house when I'm called back to the curb by a carload of teenage boys. They ask directions quietly, forcing me to get closer to the car; when I'm close enough, they douse me thoroughly with jets of ketchup and mustard from squeeze bottles, then rocket away to the squeal of laughter and tires. I walk home through the woods, crying, then sniffling, then angry. By the time my trick-or-treating ends that evening, the incident is already receding. But by the next year, at 11 years old, my focus has shifted from candy to vandalism.
1984: Bored with (and feeling more than a little guilty about) egging homes and jumping out of the bushes in front of younger kids, hoping they'll drop their bags when they run, we devise more elaborate ways of entertaining ourselves after dark. One involves staging fake, bloody attacks on one another just as some unsuspecting motorist finds us in his or her headlights. Another incorporates a noose, a rope tied inconspicuously around the waist, and a stout limb overhanging a well-traveled neighborhood sidewalk; it's incredibly effective, but is hastily abandoned after "the body" nearly severs his spine.
1986: A friend and I sneak into a house where two sisters watch Friday The 13th Part II, unchaperoned, with the lights off. It dawns on me later that they probably only snuggled with us because we scared the shit out of them beforehand.
1989: With the events of 1986 firmly in mind, I convince my roommate Jim to go to the abandoned farm at the outskirts of Wichita Falls, Texas, known as Witches' Gate an hour before someone suggests to a number of young women that we should head out there with a few fine boxes of wine. Jim hides in a waterlogged basement until an opportune moment presents itself. We all get laid.
2001: At a party in Kenneth City, in drag, I am disciplined by a woman who may or may not have come as a dominatrix only for the occasion. Potentially embarrassing photos are taken. Later, I drive a bearded young man dressed as a nun to a nearby country-and-western dive bar for supplies. I keep the engine running. He emerges at a rather brisk pace, at the insistence of several patrons; we speed away and laugh uncontrollably until I nearly hit a light pole.
God, I love Halloween.
I wish every Friday night were Halloween; we could celebrate the beginning of every single weekend on the calendar by donning costumes and trying to startle each other into peeing a little.
All Hallows' Eve is the weirdest holiday Americans celebrate. 500 years before the time of Christ — long before the Catholic Church "legitimized" the tradition by designating Nov. 1 All Saints' Day — the Celts recognized Oct. 31 as Samhain, the end of their harvest and year, and wore costumes to confuse spirits that walked the earth on the night when the barrier between this world and the next was thinnest. But it's also the country's second-largest commercial holiday, signifying that a hell of a lot of good Christian citizens are getting something out of an age-old practice rooted deeply in paganism.
There are plenty of reasons folks get caught up in the spirit of the holiday. Most of them have nothing to do with the kids they've got, but rather with the kids they are. We could write it off as something we do because our offspring love it. We could go the opposite route, citing the love of fear as a mechanism for catharsis or even referencing "the call of age-old human practice," or some crap like that. The bottom line, however, is that it's fun to act like a kid, and Halloween offers the perfect excuse to indulge childish impulses. Even when you're shopping for your kid's costume (or far better, making one), you're living vicariously. And when you hand your lover the jewelry box with the bloody finger in it, you might as well be 12.
That's the point, really; any therapist will tell you that occasionally shrugging off the mantle of adulthood is both healthy and stress relieving. The Druids may have been serious about warding off evil, but they were also gonna get one last id-fest in before a long, cold, barren winter set in. You feel me? And this year's Night of the Fun-Ass Scare falls on a Friday, so please, spend the night indulging your children both inner and outer. I know the world has become something not exactly accommodating to willfully adolescent activity, particularly after dark, on the street and possibly resembling various potential crimes.
But it only happens once a year, so go all out — a night in jail over misconstrued motives be damned. At the very least, come by my place for a trick or a treat. I'm particularly excited about entertaining the young ones this year because we finally traded in the alley apartment with the hidden staircase for a house on a main street with a porch.
The lights for which don't quite penetrate the dense bushes on either side.
So, by all means, come and get some candy.
Scott Harrell can be reached at 813-248-8888, ext. 109, or by e-mail at scott.harrell@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Oct 30 – Nov 5, 2003.