Why I Hate Halloween

I hate Halloween.

Or maybe Halloween hates me.

It’s always been one of those holidays that never quite lives up to its promise. Bags of candy, that turned out to have a high proportion of disgusting candies like Mary Janes and Bit-o-Honey, and not nearly enough Reeses peanut butter cups. Candy corn, which turns into an indigestible mass in your stomach and causes you to puke. Costumes which itch, or make you sweat, or your mother makes you wear a down jacket over your Cinderella dress even when you protest that Cinderella did NOT wear down parkas, EVER, because what prince would dance with a girl in a navy-blue down jacket that wasn’t even a GIRL’s jacket, it was a hand-me-down from her BROTHER?

It doesn’t help that I have never been particularly good at dressing up for Halloween. Indecisiveness, coupled with a truly astounding ability to procrastinate, usually results in me attempting to throw a costume together at 7 p.m. on October 31.

Even as a child, I was somewhat costume impaired. When I was very little, I wore costumes my mom bought for me at Woolworth, which usually involved some sort of plastic mask and a matching plastic smock which explained what the mask was supposed to be. By fourth grade, when kids take pride in making their own costumes, I favored my standard costume of “A Bum,” which simply consisted of rubbing dirt on my face and wearing one of my dad’s old hats. Sometimes I came up with variants on this theme, such as “Girl Who Has Not Washed Her Face In A Long Time,” or “Person Suffering from A Disease That Resembles Dirt.”

The dirt-based costume formula served me well for several years, and at some point I got too old to go trick or treating anyway.

One year, when I was about nineteen or twenty, my friend Jenn and I decided to go to a Halloween party at a local dance club. We knew a girl who worked there, and she assured us that the costume party at The Haven was the most fabulous Halloween party ever. The Haven, she told us, was FILLED with handsome, funny guys. She met dozens of them every night there, and they were all super nice.

I was skeptical. Dana was the sort of girl who was always telling us about amazing parties that we could never seem to find, and I wasn’t sure that her definition of a cute guy was quite the same as mine. The Haven had a reputation as a meat-market kind of place, where guys wore too much cologne and girls wore too little clothing. Worst of all, it was expensive – there was usually a hefty cover charge and they didn’t even have live bands or anything.

Jenn thought we should go. It made sense, she reasoned…if all the cute, funny, nice guys were hanging out at The Haven, it would explain why we never seemed to meet any. Plus, Dana had even promised to get us on “The List” so we wouldn’t have to pay the $15 cover charge. And, it would be fun to create hilarious costumes. She also pointed out that it would be an improvement over our standard Friday night activities, which included buying a big bag of Cool Ranch Doritoes and a couple of Milky Way bars, and then sitting in the car eating junk food and complaining how we never met any guys we liked.

Her logic was compelling, so we started planning our costumes . In fact, we spent every weekend looking for just the right costume components. Unfortunately, we couldn’t seem to decide what we were looking for. “Maybe we should be ninjas! No -- lumberjacks!” “No, we should go as breakfast cereal!” “I know – we should be Jell-O!” We were great at coming up with random hilarious costume ideas, but less good at figuring out an actual plan for creating any sort of costume.

7 pm on October 31 found us in the clearance aisle at Bradlee’s, desperately looking for something – anything! – that might work as a costume. Jenn noticed that pink saddle shoes were on sale for $2, so we decided to be Fifties girls. It seemed easy enough. Using fuzzy memories of “Joanie Loves Chachi” to guide us, we rolled our jeans up to mid-calf, wore ankle socks and pink saddle shoes, oversized men’s shirts and finished it off with ponytails and a string of fake pearls.

Delighted with our ingenuity, we dropped by the Baskin-Robbins where we worked to pick up our paychecks in preparation for the most fantastic Halloween ever.

“Can you cash our checks for us?” (This was back in the days before ATM’s and debit cards.)

“Oh, sorry…there’s not enough cash in the register,” our manager apologized. “Come tomorrow afternoon, I’ll cash them for you then.”

That put a crimp in our plans. We were nearly broke. But, we reasoned, Dana was putting us on the list, so we wouldn’t have to pay the cover charge to get in. And we were sure we would meet lots of guys who would want to buy us drinks…so we probably wouldn’t need much money at all.

“You guys are going to The Haven Halloween party tonight? You better go get your costumes on!” said one of our co-workers.

“We already have them on!” we replied, amazed at his lack of observation skills.

“Oh….um…so…what are you?” he asked.

“Duh! We’re Fifties girls! Can’t you tell?”

“Um…well…you kind of look the same as you always look. Except…uh…your pants are shorter.”

He was right. We always wore oversized men’s shirts and jeans! And we frequently put our hair into ponytails! How could we not have noticed this before? Horrified, we rushed out into the night to find new and more obvious costumes.

Unfortunately, the only retail establishment open by now (it was after nine) was the gas station. We reviewed the costume components available: breath mints? Air fresheners? Chapstick? Suddenly we spied the only Halloween-related merchandise in the mini-mart: plastic vampire teeth. It was apparent that Plan B would have to involve some sort of undead bloodsucking.

We headed back to Jenn’s house and tore it apart frantically searching for some sort of vampire-looking clothes. Alas, she really had nothing suitable, as vampires are not known for shopping at the The Gap. “How about ghosts?” I asked. “Maybe we could be ghosts! All we need are some sheets!”

Jenn obliged and brought out some sheets. They were fitted sheets, which complicated matters somewhat, and they had flowers on them which were not particularly ghostly looking, but we were past quibbling about details. I got out the scissors to cut eye holes.

“What are you doing!?”

“I’m going to cut out eye holes!”

“Why???!!!”

“Um…so we can see?”

“You can’t do that!”

“What?”

“I sleep on those sheets! You can’t cut them.”

Sigh. “Don’t you have any sheets we can cut?”

“No….those are my only sheets.”

Grudgingly, I agreed that there would be no eye holes. That made walking hazardous, so we opted to drape the sheets in a shawl-like fashion over our heads. We still had our Fifties girl clothes on, and we added the vampire teeth.

“Jenn?”

“What?”

“What exactly are we?”

“I don’t know. Maybe poor widows?” She considered for a moment, gazing at our rolled-up high-water pants. “Poor widows escaping from a flood?”

“What about the vampire teeth? Where do those come in?”

“Oh. Yeah. Um….how about poor widows who escaped from a flood but were then attacked by vampires?”

“That might be a bit cumbersome to keep saying.”

“OK. Laundry vampires. That’s it. We’re Laundry Vampires. From the early ‘50s.”

Laundry Vampires From The Early Fifties! It was a stroke of genius. These were truly the Best Costumes Ever – they were confusing, which would encourage guys to ask us what exactly we were! And then we could tell them, and they would laugh because our costumes were hilarious! They would love us – we were not only hilarious, but charming, in an offbeat sort of way. We knew that we would be totally in love with us, if we were guys, and that if we were guys who met such hilariously charming girls, we would buy them drinks and ask for their phone numbers and then call them and take them out on hilariously fun dates. It was the perfect plan. This was truly going to be the best Halloween ever!

By now, it was 11:30 pm. We headed over to The Haven, eagerly anticipating all the attention we would get from our confusing but hilarious costumes.

The bouncer looked us over skeptically. “Um…this is a costume party.”

“We are in costume. We are Laundry Vampires From The Early Fifties.” We gave him our most charming smiles.

The bouncer was unimpressed. “Whatever. There’s a $15 cover charge.”

It was obvious he did not grasp the hilarious implications of our costumes. Poor meatheaded bouncer. Clearly, his intelligence was in the sub-moron range. Other, smarter guys would be much more appreciative of our awesomeness.

“Oh, we’re on the list.” We told him our names.

“You’re not on the list.”

“Yes, we are. Check it again.”

“Nope, you’re still not on it.”

“Is Dana working tonight? Can you go ask Dana? Because we are supposed to be on the list.”

“Dana’s off tonight. She doesn’t work on Fridays.”

At this point, we probably should have just gone back to the gas station and bought a big bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and a couple Milky Ways, and sat in the car eating junk food and complained about how we never meet any guys we liked.. But we were determined to get in and have the most fabulous Halloween ever.

“Fine. We’ll pay the cover.” That took most of our budget for the evening. Now we had four dollars left between us, and that was mostly in dimes and quarters.

He let us in, and we walked through the door.

Inside, the music was blaring and the dance floor was packed. Everyone was in costume. Sexy costumes. In fact, all the other girls were in sexy costumes. Every single last one of them. There were sexy vampires, sexy ghosts, sexy devils, sexy ninjas, sexy lumberjacks, sexy breakfast cereals, and sexy Jell-O. Sexy sexy sexy.

(Oh, you don’t believe me that there was sexy Jell-O? Well, there was. Sexy Jell-O, in a sexy miniskirt and sexy fishnets and sexy stilettos. You better believe it was sexy Jell-O; or at least Jell-O all tarted up thinking she was sexy.)

No one wanted to talk to us; no one male, at any rate. Actually, no one female wanted to talk to us either. We did get a lot of strange looks, but no one seemed particularly interested in learning about our hilarious costumes. They were all too distracted by the sexy lumberjacks and the sexy breakfast cereal.

Feeling just a little silly, we decided to order a drink. Combining our last funds, we were able to purchase a glass of cheap beer, which we had to share.

“This sucks.”

“Maybe Dana didn’t mean she’d be working tonight. Maybe she has the night off because she’s coming to the party instead. You know, not working at the party.”

“It’s after midnight. Don’t you think she’d be here by now?”

“Maybe she’s running late. We should wait for her.”

“I’m pretty sure she’s not coming.”

“But she’ll be upset if we don’t wait for her.”

“I’m upset she didn’t put us on the damn list. And what’s more, I don’t even actually like Dana. This sucks. Look at this place. It’s a total meat market. Worst of all, they don’t seem to be even considering us to be meat. We are less than meat to these people.”

“But we’re hilarious! And charming, in an offbeat sort of way!”

“They do not appreciate hilarious or charming or offbeat here. They only appreciate sexy lumberjacks.”

“You’re right. Let’s go back to the gas station and buy a big bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and a couple Milky Ways. And go sit in the car and eat them.”

”We can’t.´ We just spent our last four dollars on this poor-quality beer. Which, by the way, is flat. But yes, let’s leave here immediately.”

We spent the rest of the evening digging around under the car seats, in search of enough change to purchase gas station snacks. We found many things, but money was not one of them. Eventually, we got bored and went home.

And that is why I hate Halloween.