It’s that time of the year again folks: Halloween. Just as you were beginning to actually enjoy the heat of summer, BAM! October 31st comes rolling around the corner, slapping you in the face.
As a kid, I never really got into the whole Halloween thing. All my classmates would plan their Batman or truck driver costumes weeks in advance. They would build up the suspense and tension for the big moment when they could cover their faces with a mask that not only cut all visibility, but it also made breathing next to impossible. Not to mention the flaking, toxic Chinese paint they used to colour them.
And don’t forget that god damn rubber band. Kids were constantly screaming in agony because that rubber band that holds the mask on would break and nearly cut an eyeball open. You’re no longer a kid anymore, and Halloween just isn’t what it used to be.
Relevant Halloween traditions went toilet-flushy-bye sometime after I reached the socially legal trick-or-treating age. It used to be fun as hell to turn your garage into a makeshift haunted house for the neighbour kids and send dad out in coveralls with a fake chainsaw to hide in the shrubs and scare the bejeeus out of off all the shameless candy beggars.
Today all the carousing has gone away for fear of litigation, loss of rental deposits and possibly just laziness. It's less effort to download Halloween apps on to the kiddies' iPhones than to teach them how to plant fake insects or bob for apples -- and this makes Halloween so boring it might as well be Tuesday night at Applebee's.
Still, it's possible to can commit a few pranks on Halloween night without serious injury or property damage. Do a polite ring-and-run, give out cans of potted meat instead of candy, maybe even toilet paper your own house and blame someone else for it.
And where have all the homemade treats gone? It's really too bad you aren't allowed to give out homemade treats on Halloween; every year, you have to wrestle with whether to save cash by giving out cheap candy or be the cool house with the fun-size Butterfingers. Fresh-baked cookies, rice Krispies treats and popcorn balls would be a welcome change and a genuine money-saver -- if you don't subscribe to the theory that some out there are determined to bake razor blades into their brownies.
Eating a whole bag of Sour Patch Kids was fine when you were 10, but now it’ll just do you dirty. Really dirty. For the love of corn syrup and citric acid, just drop the bag and avoid the stomach ache while you still can.
Trick-or-treating isn't even fun anymore. People are so paranoid these days that old-fashioned, door-to-door trick-or-treating has been effectively replaced by zoo-boo, mall-walking and the bane of the Halloween holiday: trunk-or-treating.
Instead of enjoyable neighbourhood candy-soliciting, the kiddos can go to a parking lot to collect a few handfuls of raisin boxes, toothbrushes and gluten-free caramels from car trunks and then stick around for four more hours while trying to get their gossipy, pumpkin spice latte-fuelled parents' attention. Staking out rich people's houses, predicting candy offerings by lawn-care techniques and practicing social skills by actually talking to people you don't already know are some of the things that made Halloween great.
Trick or treating is seriously one of the craziest and most unsafe things a parent can allow their child to do. Think about it. You put your kid in an outfit that they can’t breathe in, they are sweating to death under the layers upon layers of polar grade clothing under their plastic costume, then they are sent into the dark streets to play Frogger with traffic and go to stranger’s homes and ask for candy that hopefully isn’t poisoned with asbestos.
Trick-or-treat sounds more like a threat than a good time, and substituting this for the traditional dress-rehearsal-for-life, outside trick-or-treating sadly reinforces the community-killing theory that kids aren't safe leaving their porches. “Trick or treat!” Nope. “Give me candy.” Still nope. No one gives you candy with three magic words anymore. In fact, that ended a long time ago. Now, you’re the one expected to hand out the free stuff. You can try and avoid it all you want, but you won’t stop getting knocks at the door ’til you cave.
Going out? You wish. Because Halloween falls on a weekday, and you’re expected to be up bright and smiling the next morning for school, it’s more than likely that you’ll be sitting in bed watching “Halloweentown” and binging on candy corn. Even when we shouldn’t go out though, some of us still do (if you don’t fall into the category above). The difference is we used to get euphoric sugar highs after Halloween. Now, we just get hangovers drag on for days.
Even Pumpkin carving’s a pain. Where do we start? Pumpkins are expensive (for a college student’s budget at least), carving takes so much effort and the stringy pumpkin guts that get stuck in your fingers are actually revolting. You’re better off just buying a pumpkin and attacking it with a pack of stickers.
Halloween is pointless, but there is one thing that I truly get a kick out of every year. I love going to work and trying to pick out the co-workers that were at costume parties over the weekend. It’s easy to spot them. They are the ones that have an odd blue hue to their skin because their Blue Man Group make up has penetrated their pores.
Or, you can find someone that still has a little bit of green Hulk makeup behind their ear. The best are the people that have had the inside of their mouth torn to bits by those tortuous plastic, glow in the dark Dracula teeth.
Good luck eating lunch.
Ironically, in 3 weeks time I'll be dressing up myself, for something much more appropriate.
It'll be Birmingham MCM Comic Con, and I'll be going as the Doctor.