Howlerweens of Yore

I love Halloween. As an adult, I often do not have the luxury of dressing up as I usually work late on Halloween night, but that doesn't mean I don't still get excited when I go to a store and see all the black and orange aisles full of cheaply made costumes and candy. I wish there were more holidays that involved costumes. I'm sure one day I will become that weird old lady who dresses in festive sweaters, theme earrings and brooches, and decorates for each holiday simply because there isn't more costume opportunities.


Every year I come up with a great idea, but never follow through on it. This year I was going to be Jet and Tank Girl with one of my girlfriends, but we never put it together, besides which I worked. Other would have been greats- my friend Trevor was going to dress as Terry Schiavo and I would be the CNA that would push him around in a wheelchair, a paint huffer, or a Special Olympics participant with a silver medal. Feel free to take any of these as your own.

Some of my costumes from over the years that I still remember (in chronological order, I think):
*Minnie Mouse
*Pammy Panda (of the Shirt Tales cartoon)
*Cheerleader (which I had misunderstood as "chairleader," much to the hilarity of my parents)
*Clown
*Fairy (the glitter make-up gave me a pretty intense allergic reaction)
*Something for which I had to have blue hair, probably a punk rocker (I bought a comb with blue crap on it that you comb into your hair, which subsequently turned into a disaster that got everywhere)
*Cat (not a slutty cat with a tail pinned to a bathing suit, but a mascot-style full body furry suit)
*Mime
About here there's a gap, but I am certain I dressed up.
*Cavalier (3 musketeer style- one of my very favorites!)
*Man Servant Hecubus (from Kids in the Hall)
*Dead groom (one of my girlfriends was my dead bride)
*A Cunt (I just put a skirt overy my head and turned it around at the end of the night and I was suddenly an asshole!)
*Flasher (trench coat, boxers and tank-top underneath)
This is just a sampling that I can remember off the top of my head.

The year I dressed as a Cavalier, my friend Jan decided that at 16, we were much too old to go trick-or-treating. When we showed up at her house to trick-or-treat her, she changed her mind and wanted to go along. Unfortunately, she didn't have a costume, so, as she grabbed a grocery sack to carry candy in, she came up with the best costume idea EVER. She was going as "Suspicious" because she was a teenager without a costume.

When my brother and I were children, my mom would take us out trick-or-treating after supper. But only after ALL the dishes were done. This drove me nuts to no end. (This was the same at Christmas... no presents opened until ALL the dishes were done!) After that, we'd pile into the car, dressed in costume and with pillow cases in hand. My mom insisted that we bring pillow cases so that we could fit more candy and they wouldn't break, because she LOVED Halloween. She did not dress up in a costume, but she had just as much fun as those of us who were bedecked in our Halloween finery. She took it very seriously, like a general about to go into battle.

She took us into town, only after we'd do a cursory drop-by at my grandparent's house because they wanted to see our costumes, not because they had good candy, God bless 'em. She had it all planned out ahead of time. We would start at the city limits and work our way inwards in a spiral, hitting every house in town. There was no way we were going to miss a house. Hence the need for a pillow case to fill with candy.

There were a few houses we would make sure we hit: Doctor Hastetter's because he was rich and had the best candy, Sarge Manion's because he was a dentist, so we always got handfuls of pennies, a toothbrush, and a pencil, and Claude Carlson's because he always had his porch and entry decorated, he wore the BEST costumes, and he'd always hide and jump out and scare the shit out of us.

We would go trick-or-treating regardless of the weather. Rain, snow, blowing wind, nothing would stop us on our task. It helped that mom would drive from one street to the next if it was really cold. There was nothing I hated more than wearing my coat over my costume, especially if I was dressed up as a princess or a fairy or something beautiful like that.

When I was about five or six I was supposed to be a cheerleader and I had to wear SNOW PANTS and A COAT under my pretty girly costume! I was pissed. Once we got outside, I understood. It was blizzarding, blowing snow across the road, creating snow drifts as we drove, and it was probably a good twenty below zero. I think I assume fairly when I say most parents would tell their children that it was too cold outside for trick-or-treating, but not many parents love Halloween the way my mom did.