Confessions of a Halloweenie

I am a bona fide, certified, deep fried Halloweenie. I have always loved Halloween, and I still do.

I don't really know what it is about Halloween that appeals to me so much. I certainly do enjoy all things creepy (except for spiders.) I like chilling books and movies and plays (Note: Well, as long as there is someone there to hold my hand during the especially scary bits. Liking scary things does not necessarily translate into actually being "brave," you know.)

It's no mystery why it was so appealing to me as a kid, of course. I loved to plan my costume months in advance; I was a shy kid, and the chance to be someone or something else for a night was very appealing. Unfortunately, the thrill of the costume was nearly always marred by the reality that it is freezing cold on October 31. Every year I would fight the valiant fight, but every year my mother would prevail, and I would be stuffed into (as I remember it) a full snowsuit before I headed out trick-or-treating, any semblance of a costume completely hidden. No matter what my carefully-planned outfit was, I ended up looking like the Goodyear Blimp, or the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. And no matter how secretly grateful I was to my mother at the end of the long, cold night, I would still kick up the same fuss the following year and the cycle would continue.

But I didn't REALLY care about how bundled up I was, because I still got to go out after dark with my friends, and I would still come home with a giant loot bag of candy at the end of the night. My friends and I quickly came to know which houses gave out the best treats; I remember nearly weeping when we discovered the house that gave out full-size chocolate bars. Cans of pop were a mixed blessing; they were delicious, but too many of them would weigh down your bag and force you home early. We knew where the dentists (and their toothbrushes) lived and which neighbours gave out apples and teeny, useless boxes of raisins. We knew where the mean old lady lived - the one who wouldn't give you anything if you were also collecting change for UNICEF. (Note: I'm not kidding about this, and as an adult I often wonder what that lady's deal was. So I did a google search using the keywords "refuse," "UNICEF" and "Halloween," and the first relevant link that came up was from the white supremacist group STORMFRONT. Figures - jerks. In any case, we fooled the mean old lady by flipping our UNICEF boxes around to the back and got candy anyway.)

But now I am all grown up. I don't go out trick or treating and I don't wear costumes. (Note: This is not technically true, as I am attending a Halloween party on Friday night and I am totally stumped about what to wear. If you have an idea for me, please post a comment and tell me! I will give you all the credit and buy you a beer.) So why is Halloween still so exciting for me?

Part of it is because I am desperate to retain some of the childhood wonder and excitement I used to feel around holidays and special occasions. When you are an adult there are meetings to sit through, paperwork to fill out and bills to be paid, and if you're not careful, you can let those moments of giddy anticipation that once punctuated your childhood pass you by. Everything is a big damn responsibility, and opportunities to get really excited over everyday occurrences are few and far between.

But here's what I think it REALLY is, and what it always has been for me. I love the fact that we have a socially mandated night of silliness and mischief and gluttony and sin inserted into our otherwise staid calendar. I mean, take Christmas, which is the apparent antithesis to Halloween. Christmas is light, Halloween is dark. Christmas is about giving, Halloween is about getting. Christmas is about what comforts us, and Halloween is about what scares us. Certainly Halloween strikes fear into a few evangelical Christian groups, who would like to see it banned altogether.

I would argue to those groups that Halloween and Christmas have something in common. I can't remember what comic pointed this out first (I know I didn't think it up!) but we spend tonnes of energy teaching and reminding kids not to accept candy from strangers ... and then we have a night where we encourage kids to do just that. And we open our doors to other people's children - sometimes a hundred of them in one night. Then we "oohh" and "ahh" over their costumes and give them a piece of candy and our goodwill as they toddle off to the next house. For such a "scary" holiday, that's a pretty sweet sentiment.

I'm too old to trick or treat, and my strict condo building does not hold the same rosy view of trick-or-treating as I do (the condo blog is coming ... I swear.) So this Friday I'll head out into my neighbourhood and take a walk at dusk. I'll go out there to see all of the kids in their snowsuits calling "Trick or Treat!" and their parents hiding in the nearby bushes, whispering "SAY THANK YOU!" at the top of their lungs. Hope to see you out there.

And just wait 'till you see me at Christmas.

Everything is Everywhere: The End of Anticipation

Just a week ago, my friend Melissa and I were driving across the southern tip of Texas. On one particularly long driving day, during which we had been passing through small town after small town in virtual silence, Melissa suddenly turned to me and said "everything is everywhere."

What she meant was that every town seemed to have the same stores in which you could get ... well ... everything. Each town that had 15,000 people or more also had a Target and/or a Walmart (often both) a "Whataburger" (this fast food chain was new to me) a "Church's Chicken," a "Sonic Burger" a "Home Depot" a "Walgreen's" drugstore and a "HEB" grocery store (HEB apparently stands for "Here Everything's Better.") And these weren't small stores, either ... they were gargantuan.

Yes, as we drove across Texas, everything was at our fingertips. Our trip to Target was a revelation; Melissa and I both bought much needed no-name sleeping pads for only 20 dollars! And to think that at Mountain Equipment Co-Op we would have paid at least 80 dollars for industry-proven Therm-a-Rest pads like a pair of suckers! Of course, the Target sleeping pads were useless. They stayed inflated for approximately 30 minutes, and those thirty minutes were pure hell; imagine trying to get comfortable on top of three half-inflated basketballs and you'll get the picture. But there was no need to fret about our purchases because there were a Target store every twenty feet, so returning them was a snap. Everything was, indeed, everywhere.

It is incredible to live at a time when everything we want seems to be instantly attainable. Within the confines of one store you can find organic soap, ground venison and potato chips flavoured like Kung Pao chicken. Online booksellers like abebooks.com have made my second-hand book hunting a quick and easy task. Heard a song you like on the radio? Don't want to wait for the next Harry Potter movie to come out on video? Don't feel like researching and writing that pesky essay? Get on the Internet and get downloading!

My brother told me recently that he asked his friend Casey to show him how to download movies and TV shows from BitTorrent, a worldwide file-sharing system. Colin was very excited to acquire commercial-free television, but Casey prefaced the lesson with a warning. "Are you sure you want to know?" he asked. "Because you'll never be excited about a DVD release date again. You'll probably never go to Blockbuster and scan the shelves to decide what you're in the mood for again. BitTorrent actually takes some of the fun out of it all."

When Colin told me this story, I started to think about the power of anticipation. Are we missing out on the excitement of waiting for something because, as Melissa pointed out, "everything is everywhere?"

The more I thought about it, the more I started to realize how much I enjoy anticipating something. I love the lead up to Christmas as much as I love Christmas Day. I know that November 1 to December 24 is a capitalist's dream come true, but I admit that I adore the twinkling lights, incessant carols, and wrapping the gifts that I have carefully chosen for family and friends. When I was a kid, the weeks leading up the Halloween were sheer bliss, full of costume-planning, pumpkin-carving and elementary school Halloween crafts. Really, the preparation was just as much fun as the night itself. And everyone knows that planning and getting ready for the high school dance can be the best part of what is often a long and/or humiliating night.

I remember one of the best lessons that I ever got from my fourth year theatre professor in the "Advanced Acting and Directing" course. I was struggling with a scene in which I had to passionately kiss a classmate who was a good buddy, but didn't inspire a ton of passion in me (nor I in him.) After watching us clinch and mash our faces together my prof pulled us apart and rolled his eyes. "Don't you get it?" he asked. "There's no interest here ... you're going in for the kiss too soon. Look at magazine ads that show a romance between a man and a woman. They're never actually kissing .... they're ALMOST kissing. Maybe their lips are touching, but just barely. It's the moment BEFORE the kiss that really gets the heart racing. Let the audience wait for it ... once you actually kiss the anticipation is over."

And he was right. It's those moments before a kiss, when you're not 100% sure whether or not it's going to happen, that gives you that twisty feeling in your heart. Those are the moments that I appreciate as a mid 30's singleton and that my married friends tell me that they wish that they could experience again. I would never want to go back to high school, but I do sometimes wish that I could recapture those pre-dance flutters. I can see how I try to keep anticipation alive in my adult life. I try to get my Christmas shopping done early so that I can appreciate the Peanuts specials, the cocoa and the carols without getting bogged down in the cranky crowds. And every year I host a pumpkin-carving party before Halloween, so that my adult friends and I can recapture the joy of scooping out handfuls of gooey pumpkin guts and setting our masterpieces aglow.

Melissa is right - everything is everywhere. As consumers we should look at that fact as an incredible privilege and treat it with respect and restraint. But perhaps we should ask ourselves whether or not we DESERVE the things that we get immediately, or whether we should actually wait for them. And if we do actually have to wait for something, we should try to enjoy the moment, because the anticipation ... like all good things ... will surely come to an end.