Halloween

There's nothing quite like the joy of handing out candy to children. You don't even have to be nice to them, they just come right up to your door to be frightened.

I noticed that the fifteen or so trick-or-treaters we got didn't say "Trick or Treat!" Some of them were too young to get the whole concept yet and the rest of them just stood there and looked at me until I handed out the candy. In my day we said "Trick or Treat," gosh darn it.

I did have a young girl tell me she liked my outfit. I could see in her eyes that she couldn't wait until she too was old enough to wear lingerie in public. That's what I decided on to go with my fangs, by the way. Lingerie.

Halloween Costume 2009

Halloween is mere days away and I have no costume plans. This is saddening since it's my favorite holiday. For as long as I can remember, I have waited each year for that day to roll around. I was almost born on Halloween, so maybe that's it. Or maybe it's the fact that since birth my mother has instilled in me the thrilling idea that it's a night for dressing up and wandering the neighborhood in search of candy and spine-chilling events.
Granted, it's not surprising that I haven't planned a costume yet. I think I ran out of my best ideas sometime in middle school. That's around the same time I stopped trick-or-treating, but the costume problem had nothing to do with that. I stopped because I knew I had grown out of it. Trick-or-treating is for kids. That's what makes it so special. It's one of the few privileges the under 13 set really gets.
My most original costume, as I've told a few people lately when the topic came up, was the year I was a picnic table. I got the design from a magazine. My dad took pieces of wood and made a frame for my shoulders. Then we draped a vinyl tablecloth over it with a hole cut out for my head. I took items from my extensive plastic food collection and glued them to the front. Voila. Except the people opening the door at several houses had no idea what I was. They were at a complete loss. It got so bad that I finally started saying, "Trick or treat. I'm a picnic table." whenever people answered the door.
Maybe I'll just break out the plastic fangs again this year. I made a modest investment back in middle school into two individual fangs that I molded to my teeth for a vampire costume. Ever since then, I've been a vampire for Halloween more often than not. I even pop them in just to startle people or when I need a pick-me-up. What can I say, it makes me feel good to have fangs.
This year I was hoping to talk the boyfriend into being Mulder and Scully from the X-Files, but I don't think that's going to work out. I've already been a witch, a pirate and a cat burglar and I don't really feel like repeating those this year.
Plastic fangs, here I come.