In an ideal world, we could all prance through the streets every day wearing pink tights, caking our faces with massive amounts of face paint and screaming in an irritating fashion. Unfortunately, not everybody has the good fortune of Richard Simmons, and the rest of us must cram our fun into a single night each year.
The mere mention of Halloween brings back a multitude of vivid memories from my childhood. Looking back, I can almost feel the increasing asphyxiation caused by the rubber mask I wore every year. Back then, I thought suffocation was a small price to pay for assuming the identity of a greenish ghoul, but I have recently come to appreciate the fact that I am naturally endowed with a face scary enough to cause a similar reaction, particularly when members of the opposite sex are involved.
Aside from mask-related suffocation, my most vivid Halloween memories involve the excessive expressions of safety concerns from the entire adult population. Throughout my elementary school career, I was forced to annually endure the same Halloween safety video, the one where that familiar monotone drones on about adorning costumes with bike reflectors and rejecting unsealed treats.
Personally, I never considered Halloween safety to be a big deal. After all, nothing adds flavor to a bag of candy corn like a few razor blades and a dirty syringe.
Sure, the fact that the person behind each door could very well be a naked, axe-wielding psycho constituted a certain amount of danger, but that only added to the excitement of trick-or-treating, helping to make Halloween the most exciting holiday of my young life.
Plus, since I never got to fulfill my childhood dream of meeting Launchpad from \Ducktales,"" I had to search for other sources of happiness, such as eating ""fun-sized"" bags of Whoppers until I vomited.
Unfortunately, along with pants peeing and nose picking, the pleasures of Halloween gradually faded away with maturity. Of course, there were those awkward years where I decided to stubbornly cling to the tradition.
I can still remember the crushing tirades I received at every door at the close of my trick-or-treating career. ""Aren't you a little too old for this? And you're not even wearing a costume, that's just a flattened Cleveland Indian's hat! We're going to have to save our Sugar Daddies for the children.""
If there's one thing I learned when I finally gave up trick-or-treating, it's that people don't recognize a good Jim Thome costume when they see it. Seeing as this occurred just last year, I can only hope that people were simply on edge because they were anticipating the results of the upcoming presidential election.
While my age has finally forced me to give up trick-or-treating, living in Madison has offered me the chance to revive my observance of the holiday. The outrageous celebration on State Street is actually quite reminiscent of youthful Halloween nights, with the mass consumption of candy replaced by the mass consumption of booze. If anything, a great similarity exists in the temporary high and the resulting sickness.
Though the types of goodies are adapted to fit the town's atmosphere, Madison embodies the spirit of Halloween, allowing students a chance to act like kids again. I wonder if that gives me an excuse to pick my nose.
