What Do You Want To BE this Halloween?

I should have avoided the store.  Instead, I let the nostalgic memories from childhood celebrations lure me in, and I found myself dumbstruck in the local Spirit Halloween store.  What has become of October 31st?

I won't even attempt to detail the origin of Halloween, but can we all agree that it was never a Satanic ritual, and in fact stemmed from a celebration of the fall harvest?  Are you with me?  Are we still on the same page?  Good; let's continue.

When I was young we decorated our house with a scarecrow my dad made from PVC pipes and old clothes.  Black cat pictures hung in our front window and Jack O'Lanterns were carefully crafted and carved by each member of the family.  One year I used orange halves as ears on a Garfield-inspired pumpkin.  My favorite, most comfortable costume consisted of long "footie" pajamas and a teddy bear and voila I was a middle-school 'baby'.

But now?  Have you seen the offerings?  Unless you are that awesome (i.e. crazy)  mom who decides to painstakingly create your kids' costumes from scratch, they will need to choose a store-bought abomination. Admittedly, these are more realistic than in years past, but I can't understand what sellers are thinking.  Why do they make child-sized hooker clothes?  Or little boy axe-murderer outfits?  And why are we, as parents, tolerating this shift to the extremes?  Personally, I love The Walking Dead.  But my kids should not want to dress up as Rick Grimes, Daryl Dixon, or the pajama zombie girl... because they shouldn't get that pop culture reference!

Let's pretend that our entire civilization collapsed (think Mayans) and future anthropologists only had access to Halloween stores to learn about our culture.  I said pretend.  I know that's not gonna happen but I'm making a point here.  They would theorize that people died off after becoming zombies (some people still say it could happen, whatever).  Unfortunately our armed forces, police units, firefighters, medical professionals, and even super heroes were unable to help anyone because they could not run in their platform hooker shoes and fishnet stockings, with their super-tight corsets pushing their bosoms up so far they couldn't breathe.  They were then easy targets for the lunatic clowns and serial killers that finished everyone off.  The babies apparently turned rabid and ate each other (seriously, what is up with all the creepy baby decorations???).  Only furry hoodies and leg warmers remained.

Do I miss the days of the plastic costumes that tied in the back and made you sweat profusely, and the plastic masks with miniscule eye holes and mouth cutouts?  Yeah, I kinda do.  I was C3PO and Wonder Woman in those getups.  Good times.  That scene in ET where the kids go out trick-or-treating in the early evening represented an ideal Halloween - maybe one that only briefly existed.  I'd love to see a return to that innocent time.

Man, if any kid shows up with a simple sheet-ghost, or better yet: a Charlie Brown sheet with multiple holes cut in it, I'm going to dump my entire bowl of candy in his or her little plastic pumpkin.  Make that their king-sized pillowcase.  I guess some things have to change.

Childhood Fears: There's Always a Monster Lurking...

My boys are getting older and I have not had to drag them with me to the public women's bathroom for many years.  I forget some of the trauma that created - for everyone involved really.  I had to try to corral them toward the restroom and make sure we could all cram into the one handicapped stall and then admonish them not to unlock the door while mommy was going number one (they needed to know this or they would repeatedly ask).  I'd settled in, bracing myself for the loud comments about mommy's lack of a penis while the other ladies in line snickered.  But those poor, unsuspecting bathroom-goers also had to endure the wanna-be-ninja, not-so-stealthy lurkers who suddenly appeared under the adjoining walls to quizzically stare up at them while they did their business.  Uh huh.  Who's laughing now?

I almost had a complete meltdown the first time I allowed my son to go into the men's restroom unattended.  Those two minutes stretched on forever and all I could think about were the pedophiles who hung out, waiting for helpless boys who were starting to get too old to visit the ladies' room.  I loved the idea of making my kids count the entire time.  (Nudging door open a tad) "Louder!  I can't hear you!"  "I can't tinkle when I have to say numbers!"

Yesterday as I was entering a restroom I saw another mom shepherding her son in front of her.  He stopped suddenly as the door opened and the mom instinctively knew to calm his bathroom-fears.  "Honey, there's not even an air dryer in here.  It's gonna be alright."  Oh my gosh, I totally blocked this from my memory.  You had to stake out each bathroom to find out if it was gonna give your kids nightmares because of the loud airplane takeoff that occurred each time someone decided not to just wipe their freshly-cleaned hands on their mom jeans.  I was thinking about that phase when I heard them discussing the next stressor.  Would the toilet suddenly decide to flush on its own?  Yep, it was an automatic flusher.  She kept reassuring him that it was alright while also praising him for getting the pee in (or near) the toilet.  As I stood up I heard the loud whooshing flush of my toilet over his little high-pitched squeals.  Oops.  Sorry buddy.  His own toilet monster soon came to life and he again freaked out, but mom was telling him the whole time, "It's fine honey.  See? We're all OK, right?  Nothing happened to us and you are fine."  You never know how long this bathroom avoidance stage will last, or what other events will trigger the same reaction.

When Logan was 2 1/2 years old we went into a party store in early October.  Big mistake.  The aisles were festooned with creepy Halloween clowns, bats, and hanging dismembered mummies.  He was completely traumatized.  I had to leave the store and go back later without kids to pick up the paper goods I needed to donate to some school event.  For the next year or so he wouldn't go into ANY store without first having a top-rated, freakout tantrum.  He was expecting a damn troop of clowns to jump out at him from under an apparel carousel, or some ghost to come sailing down the cereal aisle and suck out his soul.  It took a good five years for him to go willingly into a Halloween store.  And then who was the one screaming when a giant, fuzzy spider jumped up on a motorized lever?  Yeah... it was actually me.  But the cashiers were very reassuring that most of the customers had been startled.  I'm sure they witnessed that same kind of ineffective hopping, coupled with a bleating yelp hundreds of times each day (I keep telling myself).  Good thing I could quickly run off to the bathroom by myself!