#835: Why I Don't Like Halloween
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 It was 1978 or 1979, and I had this wolf costume that I thought was the coolest thing ever. It was one big jumpsuit made of soft brown flannel with a plastic wolf mask. I think it was handed down to me from a family with three boys across the street, which would explain why I thought it was so amazing.
Those three boys were rowdy and occasionally mean, but they had better toy cars than I did and never tried to force a Barbie on me, so I often headed over to try to get in on whatever game they were playing. Because I was younger, they tried to ignore me until I went away, but one day when I was extra persistent, they told me that I could stick around. I felt so big.
They had built a fort out of cinderblocks with a weighted down plywood roof. It had the look of a possible deathtrap, and I was scared of it, but when they told me I could go inside it, I did. They had never let me in before. I went in first, and being the trusting little kid I was before I reached the wise old age of five, I did not stop to think over the possible consequences that their shared winks implied.
Before I could even turn around, they had thrown another plywood board and more bricks in front of the door. I was trapped. I could hear them laughing outside, but after beating the fort with sticks for a while, they forgot about me and left. I hyperventilated. I cried. I beat my fists on the roof. Nothing. All the panic my tiny body could muster was not going to free me.
It was a hot summer day, too, so it was hell-hot in their. By the time the brothers remembered that I was in there and removed the cover from the entrance, I was limp and sweaty and suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. Instead of being angry at the them like I had been at first, I embraced the first brother I saw and thanked him for his kindness. I think it was due to dehydration-induced delirium, but I loved them even more.
It was this Stockholm Syndrome that made me think the wolf costume was so damn fine. I even liked the way my spit smelled when it condensed hotly inside the moulded plastic mask. When I look back, I know that my dementia started early in life.
I loved that costume right up until we went outside and had to go door to door for candy. I looked at other little kids trick-or-treating across the street. They yelled Trick or treat, smell my feet / Give me something good to eat / Not too big, not too small / Just the size of Montreal. I thought they sounded like idiots. There was no goddamned way I was going to say anything stupid like that.
Then, I noticed that a bunch of the kids out there were girls, and every little girl I saw was sporting a tutu or carrying a wand or wearing a tiara. This just made the whole affair extra stupid for me. I was decidedly not a froufrou little girl, nor did I actually consider myself to be a little girl. Not really. I did know that I was not a little boy, though, and that I did not like how I was always lumped in with these fluffy, pink creatures.
There I was in my wolf costume, and every door I went had someone behind it who said Oh! What a cute little boy you are! By the fourth or fifth house, my anger was enormous.
I still thought thought my costume was cool. I just did not want to be outside doing the trick-or-treating thing in it anymore. I was not those girls, hell no, but I was not a little boy, either, and wearing the costume in public made that distinction all the more bizarre and disconcerting for me.
My parents still like to tell the story about how I came home that night stomping my feet and yelling emphatically I am not a little boy! I am not a little boy! Yeah, that was so hilarious.
The last time I wore a costume as a kid, I was ten or eleven years old, and my mother was pestering me to go out and have fun with my friends on Halloween night. To spite her, I made a sign that I hung around my neck that said SELF in black permanent marker, and then I went to every door on our crescent. The adults giving out the candy would stop, stare at me quielty for a moment, shrug, and then dump a few suckers or whatever in my pillow case. When I arrived home and my mother saw my so-called costume, she was mortified.
Take that.
Reader Comments (10)
Self.....I am going to have to try that costume next year....either that, or "Leaper".
Nodding my head, knowingly. Yes, yes, I can relate...
I love that you have such detailed memories as a kid. I can never remember anything unless it was something extremely stupid, and then I only remember how freaking embarrassed I still am over it.
I remember the last time I went trick o' treating... I was 13 and dressed as a full blown hippie, easily achieved with the length and flatness of my hair at the time - plus I loved me some tie-dye anyhow. A band wrapped around my forehead and some beads around my neck, I knocked on doors until I accidentally hit the house of my crush.
And boom, there went the last bastion of my childhood.
Why do little boys think it is fun to lock little girls in things. I'd like to know the psychology on this. Once, when I was about seven, I got locked in a play "castle" at a day camp. It would have been okay except for this castle came equipped with two creepy manequins dressed as the "king" and "queen". I was duly traumatized.
Self is what i'm dressed as today!!
Happy wednesday. A completely non orange and black related festive greeting. :D
you're beautiful.
i got the little boy crap when my mom gave me a pixie cut.
i was a frou frou girl who climbed trees and threw mudballs and spit. almost all my friends were boys.
but i was a big boy for our halloween party! and still myself;)
I weep for the child Schmutzie. The cruelty of children frightens me. Especially when they grow up, but not out of it.
schmutzie, you are really tremendous.
Kyran, thank you! Coming from someone with your talent, that's quite a compliment.