Halloween

Growing up, Halloween took the cake for best day of the year. Better than Christmas. Better than Thanksgiving. Better than my birthday. One of the worse days of my childhood took place in first grade. I couldn’t tell you what my costume had been that year. It might have been a vampire, but I threw up during school on Halloween. I missed out on Halloween that year. You get what, like 14 Halloweens? And I missed one of them.

I remember handing out candy with my mom and dad, while my brother and sisters had a good time. I was miserable, probably. All I wanted to do was bring my sports-themed pillow case out trick or treating. Luckily, I had some pretty great Halloweens to replace that crappy one. For some reason, and to this day I still don’t know why, I decided to be a ’60s girl in about third grade. I wore this long, pink shirt and had a blond wig. It definitely was the worst Halloween costume I’ve ever wore. I dressed up as a rapper a couple times. I think Nelly once, while wearing a throwback Jerry Stackhouse 76er jersey, even though Nelly had no affiliation with Philadelphia. Kindergarden might have been my favorite costume year. I dressed as Frankenstein, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I had a killer mask for it with scars and everything.

It must’ve been 7th grade when I made the dumbest decision on Halloween night. I went out with a few friends. We obviously walk to the bigger houses to get the big candy bars. My favorites had been Milky Way, Starbursts and Twix. Skittles had been cool, too, but for some reason I did something stupid with Skittles. We had been walking down a semi-busy road that leads into a major highway, and I thought it would be groovy idea to throw a pack of Skittles freely into on-coming traffic. The pack hit a brand new Dodge Durango. At first, we laughed. Just the idea of a car being hit by Skittles had been funny, but then the car made a quick right into the next street, and began turning around when we sprinted towards my one friend’s house. Fortunately, we got away, but I never made a dumber decision on Halloween.

Halloween’s pretty sweet. Dressing up as anyone you wanted was a great part of childhood. Then, all of those great Disney Channel movies involving Halloween made the day even better. Halloweentown is obviously the greatest of Disney Halloween movies, but Under Wraps, Phantom of the Megaplex and Mom’s Got a Date with a Vampire are a close second behind the Halloweentown trilogy (the fourth Halloweentown does not count as an actual movie). Add those Disney movies with Goosebumps movies, and Halloween nearly had Christmas movies beat as a child.

It would be great to go back and dress up one final time. I’d grab my SpongeBob pillow case, and hit the streets to find the best and biggest candies. But, Halloween as a college student is a fun time. Freshman year I visited Penn State, and wore scrubs (what a lame costume). I wore a Grinch costume sophomore year. Last year I just sort of wore anything I could find. This year remains a secret. Halloween might lose some luster after childhood, but it’s still one of the best days of the year.