Halloweens growing up did not hold many decent
memories. It simply wasn’t fun.
I grew up in the middle of nowhere, in a school district
that was scattered over a vast area. My
friends lived on the far reaches of the district, nearly 20 miles away. As you can imagine trick or treating back and
forth with them was out of the question.
My neighborhood, if you can call it that since really all it
consisted of was a road with a scattering of houses, had no sidewalks and no
street lights. As a small child, I was
not allowed to traipse up and down the road after dark. Nor were the few other children that lived
within a mile and a half.
There were two years when one set of parents collected all
the kids and took us around as a group to the same houses where they’d picked
us up individually. It took all of ten
minutes, start to finish.
Costumes then, when you had a mother who didn’t sew, were
those cheap, shiny open-in-the-back jumpsuit type things with a plastic
mask. I know I had a Flipper
costume. And I half-remember a Casper costume although
that might have been the same electric blue coverall as Flipper with a new
mask.
Carving pumpkins was highly frowned upon. It was much too messy although there were sad
attempts when I was honestly too little to be wielding the big carving knife. The wrath they inspired just wasn’t worth it.
Yeah, Halloween to me leaves a lot to be desired. But to those of you who have happier
memories, enjoy!
