November 17, 2011

Halloween...

Did everyone have a good frightful Halloween this year?  Was it filled with ghoulies and ghosties or faeries and follies?  I love Halloween and always look forward to the new memories Miracle makes with her cousins while out going door to door.  Halloween is my favorite, but Miracle does go with her dad and that is something they share together... for now.

Growing up, I just loved trick-or-treating with all our neighborhood friends. For the life of me I can’t remember any of my childhood costumes in any sort of detail except one. Is that a bit odd? I think it’s almost freakish since the one I remember pretty vividly was that of a clown. Clowns freak me out… and I’m not entirely sure why.

I remember my best childhood friend, Kathy, helped me with this costume. I don’t know where we got all the pieces, but I was able to put together a wig, big clown shoes and an outfit that we dug out of her closet. I don’t know why I remember digging through her closet, but voila! There it was; the perfect costume. Again, I’m not sure why I even remember that.

My brothers and I had a blast going through our whole neighborhood, dragging our parents behind. I’m not sure it was actually both our parents as I know one had to stay home to hand out the candy. It was probably my dad that would go with us.

I can just recall the excitement of going door to door with the, at first, cheesy little plastic orange pumpkin that seemingly cut my hand each time I reached in to pull out a piece of candy. I was elated when I finally graduated to being able to handle trick-or-treating with a pillowcase. Sadly, by the time I hit that milestone I was too old to be trick-or-treating and there were hardly any crowds left anyway. Going around the neighborhood was such fun and Halloween has always remained as my favorite “holiday”.

When I was 16, I worked at Miller’s Outpost in South Coast Plaza. The home of Levi 501 jeans and bandanas!! The crew I worked with was such a fun group of “kids”… except Joe, the moody manager. The year I was 16 my mom put together the most awesome gown for my Bride of Frankenstein costume. We used a white sheet, some cotton for the shoulder pads and some strips of tattered sheet for the gauze arm wrappings. I teased out my long curly hair up into a rat’s nest of great Halloween coif! We sprayed some version of a lightning bolt stripe up the sides of it and called it a costume! With the makeup and the black nail polish, that was by far the best costume I ever had (at least that I can remember. Please revisit paragraph one RE: memory loss).

Remember the scare in the early 80s of the poisons in the candy and razorblades in the apples? THAT changed Halloween forever. Gone were the homemade popcorn balls and the fun cookies (that ended up crumpled in the pile of goodies anyway, ne’r to be eaten).

Actually, according to Wikipedia.org (“the truth” tee hee hee), apart from one incident—actually an act of premeditated murder by a trick-or-treater's father—there have been no recorded incidents of deliberately poisoned candy during Halloween or any similar occasion. Okay, solves that myth.

What were your little grommets dressed up as as? What were YOU dressed up as? It was a super foggy Halloween morning today, but ended up with nice, clear skies for the evening… Clear enough to see the ghosts shimmering in and out of the shadows.  Clear enough for the Zombies to be able to see you and shuffle to your direction.

MMmmooooooAAAHHHhhhhaaaaaaHHHHHAAAAAA!!!