I always look forward to Halloween. The anticipation usually starts in August, about when stores start advertising Christmas.
I'd be remiss if I didn't note that I love Halloween only despite a plethora of painful, embarrassing and otherwise traumatic things that have happened to me on or around the holiday. Almost every year I get hurt, but I keep crawling back for more.
It started when I was five. Fixated on werewolves, I went out the 31st, cheeks coated in a latex application that held clumps of synthetic hair to my face.
I made a great wolfboy, until the next morning, when my dad had to peel stubborn latex off my face while I shrieked what was more a \girlish wail"" than a ""lupine howl.""
Flash forward to the immediate post-Warren Beatty as Dick Tracy Era, and you find me sporting a yellow hat with matching water pistol. After finding the hat and gun, I'd turned lazy and worn one my of Dad's blazers, purple-lined inside out. I looked like a short, fat Prince impersonator gunning for a water fight in late October.
But my costume wasn't the problem. The problem was having to ride with my mom to pick up my older brother after some neighborhood toughs roughed him up for his candy and dispersed his possessions around someone's yard.
I distinctly remember wanting to drive our Caprice Classic into the Rock River when the homeowner came out to gawk at my brother and me while we combed through the front yard for a lost watch.
By 1992, I myself was old enough to get beat up for candy. And get beat up I would have, if my friend hadn't fallen down and taken the flogging meant for both of us from an older punk who now is, has been or soon will be incarcerated.
As if my preteen Halloweens hadn't been humiliating enough, sixth grade marks the entry of romance into the already bubbling cauldron.
I don't think I really need to tell you that my friend had a costume party at which the girl I liked revealed that she didn't want me near her.
When I was 17, I spent Halloween in unprecedented public disrepute, wishing it weren't so damned easy to buy beer in Janesville.
As a freshman here, inadequate planning and general incompetence left a few friends and I with no place to party. I was in bed by midnight.
Last year I was tear-gassed for not rioting.
Halloweens represent a heavy portion of dark spots on my otherwise pleasant upbringing and early adulthood. That's why it was such a surprise when nothing bad happened specifically to me last weekend.
Really, Halloween, like all holidays, is just a day. It's the situations we put ourselves in that cause misfortune.
You should know that if you give a fat little geek a bag of candy and send him mincing about in a cutesy costume, local hoodlums might pound him.
And it's similarly intuitive that if you pack 10 times the usual quotient of drunken hooligans onto a closed street, they may break things.
I personally have learned to avoid older bullies, latex makeup, riots and girls I like who wish I'd die.
I think I'm ready to apply these lessons to future Halloweens. I'm already looking forward to next year.
Dan is a senior majoring in journalism and can be reached at dlhinkel@wisc.edu. His column runs every Thursday in The Daily Cardinal.
