Halloween

Halloween is the best holiday after Christmas, because of Trick-Or-Treating. Some peoples' Mamas buy them cheap costumes, with masks that never look like who they're supposed to be, but my Mama always makes ours. We dress as Spanish senoritas, or little Dutch girls, or Indian maharanis and sometimes, when the costume calls for it, we get to wear lipstick and some of Mama's jewelry. I love just the look of Mama's jewelry box, and the smell of her cold cream, because they remind me of Halloween.

On Halloween, I can hardly eat supper, I'm so excited. After supper, Daddy puts our pumpkin on the floor. He scoops out the insides and cuts a scary face on it. Sometimes Mama toasts the pumpkin seeds and makes snacks out of them, but I don't care when she does that. Pumpkin seeds are hard to open, and there's not much seed inside to make them worthwhile. Daddy puts a candle into the pumpkin, and lights it. He puts it in the kitchen window. I take big sniffs of the good smell of candle and pumpkin mixed together. This is one of the best smells of Halloween.

When it starts getting dark outside, then it's time to go Trick-Or-Treating. We take our plastic pumpkins and we walk up and down the streets of the neighborhood. Mama says we need to watch out that someone doesn't give us something bad. She says never eat apples, because they might have razor blades in them, never eat any candy unless the wrapper is sealed, and never eat anything homemade, because you don't know what the person's put in them. No one ever offers me an apple, but one time someone does offer me a popcorn ball. I say “no thank you.” Mama tells ne it's okay to take it, because the person is a friend of hers, but I don't. It's against the rules. Another time, I find a piece of candy with an open wrapper when I'm going through my stuff after Trick-Or-Treating. It's a mini-chocolate bar, and they're the best kind of candy there is, but I throw it away anyway.

When we come home from Trick-Or-Treating, we empty our plastic pumpkins out on the kitchen table. I make my candy into piles, one pile for the chocolate, one for the next-best candies (caramels, peanut-butter taffy, and butterscotch), and one for the jelly beans and other rejects. Mama lets us have one piece of candy each before we go to bed. Then after Halloween, we keep on getting one piece a day, until all the candy is gone. My candy lasts for a very long time, first the good ones, then the not-so-good ones, and then the reject-pieces last. We keep it in our plastic pumpkins until it's all gone, and afterward they have a good smell, like mixed candy, that is one of the other best smells of Halloween.

The year I'm in Fourth Grade, Cindy from across the street invites my sister and me to her Halloween party. My Mama says good, because Trick-Or-Treating is getting too dangerous anyway. We go to the party, but it is not very interesting. There's bobbing for apples, which I don't like, and dancing, which I am not good at, and the snacks are store bought cupcakes with yucky icing. Everyone gets a little bag of treats to take home. Only a few of them are candy, and no mini-chocolate bars.

The next year, I am in Fifth Grade, and we get invited to another Halloween party. Mama doesn't bother making us costumes. She lets me use the costume she's made for a Halloween party she's going to: It's a hobo-costume, with patches on the dress that I sew on myself, and wires in my braids to make them stick out. This one's a better Halloween party than the last one, anyway. There's no dancing, and the girl that throws it has a little mini-projector and reel with scenes from Disney's Robin Hood. The snacks are still not very good though, and the treat-bags are teeny. My Halloween, which used to last until after Thanksgiving, only lasts one day.

When I'm in Sixth Grade, I beg Mama to let us go Trick-Or-Treating. She says my sister Robin and I are really getting too old for it (my other sister Karen who's six years younger than me is still the right age), but we can go unless someone invites us to another Halloween party. Naturally someone does invite us to a party. It's Cindy again, so that means more dancing (which I'm still not good at), along with the little treat-bags and the cupcakes with the yucky icing.

The next year when I'm in Seventh Grade, Robin and I have our own party. We make a haunted house in the garage, with our practice hairstyling models for severed heads (the stains never come out where we use lipstick for pretend-blood). I make a witch-mask for my costume, in Art Class at school. The kids on the bus get hold of it and break the nose and squash the hat while I'm bringing it home, but it still looks pretty good.

I don't let myself feel bad about no more Trick-Or-Treating. My teacher in Math Class says Junior High School is WAY TOO OLD for Trick-Or-Treating anyway. He says whenever a kid comes to his door who looks like they're our age, he gives them an ice cube wrapped in tinfoil to look like a treat. He says he laughs and laughs because it's going to melt and tear the bottom out of their paper treat-bag and everything's going to fall out and get lost.

After that, I stay home and hand out candy every year. The first couple years, I use the stuff around the house to make myself a costume. I'm a French Maid the year I'm in Eighth Grade. The year I'm in Ninth Grade, I dress up as Dracula. After that, I don't bother any more. I don't even bother giving out the candy. I just go to my room and read, and let Daddy do it while Mama takes Karen Trick-Or-Treating.

Then the year I'm in Twelfth Grade, I have a good costume. I'm doing a debate on Creationism vs Evolution in Government Class (I'm on the Creationism side), and for the first day, I come dressed as a caveman, with a plastic Planet of the Apes mask, and a wooden club, and a fake-fur rug around my shoulders. I think I look pretty funny, and I want to get one more use out of the costume before I'm done with it. I offer to take Karen out Trick-Or-Treating. I wear my costume, and when we stop at a house, I go up to the door too, just to show it to people. A lot of people offer me candy. I say “no thank-you,” even when the people are nice about it. When you're not supposed to do something, you're not supposed to do it, and even people being nice to you shouldn't change that.