Halloween fun

Halloween is one of the few holidays that seems to get more fun as a grown up than it is when you are a kid.

Growing up, my memories of Halloween involve an excessive amount of waiting and walking. There was the “parade” that went around the block my elementary school was on, and then after we got home from school there was the waiting for the specified time that Trick or Treating could start.

In my home town back in New Jersey having trick or treating on any night but Halloween was unheard of, and we had to wait until evening so that people would have time to get home and get their candy out. Unlike today where parents wait at the end of each driveway to ferry their horde of goblins and ghouls from house to house, we walked, and we walked some more until our bags were so heavy we couldn’t carry them anymore.

My parents had, what seemed to me at the time, a massive box filled with costume pieces. There were pirate and cowboy hats, fake pistols, swords, feathered boas and all sorts of spangly things. The box would be pulled out of the attic crawl space a few days before Halloween and we would go through and mix and match items to make our costumes.

Over the years, the collection grew with the addition of masks that ranged from being monstrous to downright creepy. Perhaps the creepiest mask was one that fit tightly on the wearer’s face exaggerating their own appearance and taking on the look of someone you definitely would cross the street to avoid. My dad loved putting it on and jump scaring us kids.

I remember feeling a bit envious of those kids who got new store-bought costumes every year. As with now, they mirrored popular movies and video games and were what all the well-to-do and popular kids were wearing.

At the same, time as I look back, my fondest memories were how we were challenged to be creative and turn the props and costumes we had into something spooky and fun.

As a parent, it has always been fun to help my children come up with costumes. One year, my son Alex wanted to be a Cyberman from the Dr. Who television show and wanted us to make the costume together. A cardboard box, silver paint and a whole lot of duct tape later and we had a pretty decent robot costume. I was pretty proud of my handiwork until we came to one house and the woman answering the door asked if he was a washing machine.