Trick or Treat

Trick or Treat
Smell my feet
Give me something good to eat

Halloween.  October 31.  A day we mark in this country with candy, costumes and celebration.  Of what?  Our playful natures.

I remember Halloween as a kid.  The thought of what you would wear, who you would be.  When I grew up, mom took us to the local department type store to pick out a costume in a box.  It was brown cardboard with a cellophane cover so you could see the colorful mask of the character you were to become.  The mask was flimsy plastic, with a small hole in the lips for breathing, and round Orphan Annie holes for eyes.  A stretchy band streamed across the back to keep the mask in place when donned.  The costume itself was a long synthetic piece of material, that tied around you, exposing your backside.  One errant cigarette spark would’ve turned any of us into a towering inferno…fire retardant costumes were not a consideration at the time…nice goin guys.

I’m sure I was a princess of some sort….some Disney wonder, Snow White or Sleeping Beauty…some female role model forced down our young throats.  Breathing was not easy – the mask caused an almost asthmatic reaction as I could hear my own breath wheeze in and out as I moved from candy casa to candy casa.  I would sweat….my face moist with condensation created from the release of my own carbon dioxide.  An occasional lifting of the mask to get adequate oxygen allowed the continuation of my nightime journey.  And peripheral vision, forget it.  But I guess it didn’t matter much since the only thing me and every kid for miles was focused on was straight ahead.

My confectionary acquisition vessel was a bucket…an orange, pumpkin faced, hard plastic bucket with a handle across the top…much like the one dad used for washing the car.  We didn’t get hip to the pillowcase carrier until we were teens….too late to change the candy casualties of my youth.

Let me explain.  Every year, dad would walk us around the neighborhood, standing on the sidewalk as we strove for the doorbell.  We were anxious, we were excited, and we wanted to move quickly to maximize the treats booty.  To hit as many houses as possible was our mission.

It was usually cold and always dark.  There I was – in that mask with its peepholes and costume tenaciously tied,  it was a veritable straight jacket – limiting my childish frame.  So like clockwork, we would run, adrenaline pumping through our veins.  Dad would warn not to run.  But since most of my senses were impaired by said costume, my hearing was compromised as well.  And run I did…moving my short legs as quickly as I could, hyperventalating behind my plastic princess prison. 

And what happened – year after year?  I would trip….and fall…my hard won sugar treasures spilling in a projectile fashion out of my bucket into the dark, moist grass.  I would try to reclaim, on hands and knees, what I could….but inevitably, I lost more than I could recover.  I even have foggy memories of other kids pouncing on my spillage, scurrying away like squirrels preparing for winter.

Why I never learned to keep my feet underneath me I just don’t know.  It was the lure of tricks and treats behind each lit doorway that propelled me.  Falling was not part of the equation.  But fall I did.

As I recalled those memories as an adult I laughed until I cried…not because it was particularly humorous, but because I felt sorry for that little girl inside me, who was far behind the pack, losing her candy to the night.

Over the years, I ditched the box costume and got creative.  I was a ballerina, a hippie, a movie star.  As the years wore on, I grew in to adolescence and out of the need to beg for chocolate.  I was more interested in hanging with my friends, soaping cars as the boys blew off M-80’s to the delight of the neighborhood adults.  We called it Mischief Night – the parents called it You Rotten Kids. 

I’ve been to Halloween parties over the years…dressed in various apparel – from Flower Child to May Capone (Al’s wife or how I envisioned her).  Although cocktails took the place of candy, fun was the primary motive.  It is the child in each of us that allows us to dress up, to become someone else, even for just one night.  And why not?  That’s the true treat.

Happy Halloween!