Halloween (Part 1) : A Vignette of Memories

As a young girl, I remember my mom making me the most beautiful pink and purple, irridescent, shimmery fairy tale princess costume in the world for me one Halloween. It had a tall, conical princess hat that matched my cape and dress, with a long sheer fabric 'tassle' that hung down, and it looked exactly like a princess illustration I'd found in one of our story books. I remember being in awe that my mom had managed to make it so perfect.

After being sufficiently doted on by our grandma and trick-or-treating through her neighborhood and at the gas station around the corner (where we always got dum-dum suckers just like we did when my grandma would get her tank filled up), we got back to her house with pillowcases that were too heavy for us to carry. My mom loaded us (and our loot) into the old Pinto station wagon for the long drive home, stopping off at an Arby's fast food place to eat on the way.

We all went inside, and while my mom ordered, I remember my sister and I looking at our princess-y reflections in the windows inside the restaurant, turning around and around with our sparkly little scepters, thinking ourselves to be real princesses. That our mom had put makeup and lipstick on us had been the crowning touch. I'd never felt so beautiful, and many kind people in the restaurant told us so. We played with those costumes so often over the next few weeks, they ended up in tatters.

No doubt my mom's reason for stopping was because she wanted to get something halfway decent in our systems to counteract the sugar rush we'd get once we sorted through our candy at home. My parents had to sort through our pillow cases both to make sure there were no razor blades or PCP tattoos in there, and to get rid of all the "icky" chocolate that we wouldn't want anyway.

Then all our remaining candy would be put in our Jack-O-Lantern buckets up on top of the fridge, and the long month of candy rationing began.

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I remember a Fall Festival in our Christian School gymnasium when I was in 3rd grade where we got to come in costumes (as long as they weren't 'frightful'). I dressed as Princess Leia. (The boys always wanted me to play with them at recess after that, because, amazingly they couldn't play Star Wars without a Princess Leia. When I had to go watch that movie with my boy cousins the previous summer, I fell asleep, and didn't remember what I was supposed to be doing, so most of the time I just sat on top of the Big Toy on the playground flying my aircraft.)

We went around from booth to booth spending 'tickets' to participate in things like a bean bag toss and a balloon-popping game with darts (where I might add that nobody ever got their eye poked out), where you won prizes depending where on the game board you managed to either toss or pop something. At the balloon popping booth, I won some yellow tube with red caps on either end that had a sound in it which resembled a cow mooing when you turned it upside down over and over and over. I was really bummed when that got lost somewhere that night.

But there were at least ten of these types of booths set up around the gym, and hay bales had even been brought into the gym for a festive look.

There was also a "Cake walk, where the last one standing on a safe 'spot' on the game circle won a cake. That night, after I'd spent nearly all my tickets trying to win but never even coming close, my younger sister Jami played once and won a chocolate bundt cake with rich chocolate frosting and candy corns on it which she promised to share with me. We didn't often get sweets in our household, so this was a huge deal, and we envisioned putting this away where only we knew where it was, and taking bites whenever we felt like it.

Unfortunately, our dad didn't let her keep it. This was no doubt because around that same time period, my sister and I had a bit of a track record of overdoing it on cake and mints at weddings and then having to sleep with towels on our pillows those nights because we would inevitably get sick from all the sugar.

But if anything made me sick that night, it would have been watching some of the big boys in the school bob for apples in a big wash-tub full of water. I was totally grossed out waiting in line for that event behind them, and seeing them pull their heads up dripping wet, spitting and drooling water out of their mouths and noses into that communal tub as they fought to be the first to bite into an apple. When I realized they didn't change the water between 'customers', I SO got out of that line! Never did understand the fascination with that game. Still makes me gag just thinking of it.

The highlight of the night, however, was when you reached the very last booth near the exit. It was the 'fishing' game. A long dowel with a rope and a clothes pin attached to the end was 'cast' over the booth wall, and after a 'tug', you pulled it back, and there was a good-sized sack hanging off the end of the line, with tons of candy and cheap carnival toys inside. We left very happy campers.

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There was the year I attended a Fall Festival with my friend Jamie in someone else's church basement. We all ate lots of junk food and stood around talking.

Then, the adults made us sit on chairs in a circle, blindfolded us and handed around bowls of things we were to put our hands into for the 'full' effect: Cooked Ramen noodles (brains), cooked spaghetti (worms), peeled grapes (eyeballs), thick goopy tomato sauce (blood), and something lumpy and chunky like cottage cheese with diced pears in it (puke). Which one little girl ended up doing for real after touching what she was sure were the real eyeballs. Except that was after she went into hysterics.

I remember thinking maybe she hadn't been 'mature' enough for that event. Because I was a big, mature 6th grader.

I'm still not sure what the point behind all that was, being a church and all, as there wasn't any specific talk about the evils of halloween or anything. I remember it all to be very brief. But we were all sufficiently grossed out after the one girl really puked, and as a consolation gift, we got tons of candy to take home. I had to share my candy with all my siblings because in taking me to my friend's house and back, they missed out on the opportunity to go trick-or-treating.

I also remember one mom had arrived there late with her children wearing a belly-dancing costume, and all the other kids dads kept staring at her.

:: ::

There was the year I attended a Harvest Party in our church basement and we were told that we could dress up like anything as long as it was from the Bible and we could explain our costume. I was in 7th grade that year, and most of us interpreted that to mean dressing up as Bible Characters like Moses or King Solomon or Mary, the mother of Jesus.

I'm not sure why (other than the fact that in my family, we always seemed to fly by the seat of our pants with things like this and remember two minutes before we we're supposed to be there) but the best we could come up with on short notice was for me to go as a Bible times woman...wearing my dad's striped bathrobe over my clothes.

I was really disillusioned, because I felt I looked more like the boy Joseph that was sold into slavery with that robe of many colors, except for the shawl worn over my head like a nativity character, and a few bangle bracelets, but I guessed it was better than showing up without a costume.

However, when I got there, being rather shy at the time, I spent most of the evening trying to blend into the woodwork, because when I looked around, I was surprised to find a few of "Noah's Animals" ("Aw, man...why didn't I think of that?! I could've used my headband with the two glitter balls sticking up off of long, thin springs, and gone as an ant! At the very least, I could have brought along my dad's duck call, and stood off on the sidelines making duck noises with it).
Two boys there were dressed as a horse. One horse. They wore an antiquated, homemade costume of taupe colored fur with a stripe of contrasting longer brown fur for the mane and tail, and stupid looking felt eyes with lashes, probably dug out of some grandmothers closet. One boy wore the head, and another boy had to bend over to be the hind-end, but the overall effect was more like a Chinese New Year dragon, especially with all their their antics in their blindfolded state, which were progressively over-exaggerated to make us all to laugh. And laugh we did!

They were one of the high points of that evening, running around and doing things like kicking out their feet in sync like Conga dancers might to the musical chairs music, then purposefully bumping into things. But all the hilarity and horsing around ended when they bumped into the punch table, splashing red foamy punch on one of the grown-ups.

During the 'explain your costume' portion of the evening, we were surprised to find a couple of boys came to that party dressed as a mummy, and a well-padded fat guy with a toy sword sticking out of his body with fake blood and guts hanging off where the sword went in. We kept on saying, "Oooh, they're gonna get busted"...until we found out they were "Lazarus, Come Forth" and "King Eglon".

Oh, man! And here I'd dressed as a Bible times woman/boy Joseph, when I could have been a more gory, bloody "Jezebel" dashed on the rocks with a dog licking up my blood!

Good memories, good memories.