Booooooooooo!

Beware of things that go bump in the night children, as all hallow's eve is upon us...

God, I love Halloween. I upload this to you on my break at work, because yes, I have to WORK. I took last weekend off for the big Halloween party, so I am stuck working on actual Halloween weekend. It was so worth it.

I have another Halloween post here, about my on-going problem with a Christian co-worker and Halloween. Poppy posted a great rebuttal to this post on her site, and it truly is a treat.

I stalked Poppy I mean asked her if she was going to post it yesterday, and I figured if I was going to be stalking/asking her to post it I should have my own adventures in Halloween as a child posted myself. I wrote this yesterday, and so now, without further adieu, here is how someone who grew up in a crazy ass household spent Halloween:

The original party people, my parents love any kind of a celebration. We prepared for said celebrations with enormous detail. Halloween was one of their all-time favorites.

Our town had what they called a "Monster March", a parade of all the children in their costumes. There was judging for best costume. Either myself, my brother, or my sister won it every year for 10 years straight.

This tended to piss the other people off. Just a bit.

To imagine some of the costumes my Mom came up with, some of the ones I really remember in detail are: Gene Simmons of KISS, Miss America (think Jon Benet before Jon Benet), Dolly Parton, Raggedy Ann (with my bro as Andy...we tied that year), and a Bumble Bee.

Store bought costumes they were not, young Jedi. She would make them from scratch. She would start in August. August, for f*ck's sake!

So the whole town hated us because their kid's never won. My parents made up for the fact by having the coolest trick-or-treat house ever. People used to drive from other towns to bring their kids to see the witch and the mummy, or as I called them, Mom and Dad.

The garage was set up as a haunted house type deal. Scary scenes were set up, and if you were brave enough you could sit in the "horror hour" room and listen to a tale of mystery and gore from the Mummy.

You had to face the witch to get your treat. She had a great big kettle that bubbled and steamed. Decked out in a long, flowing black dress and hat, this witch with the green face and great big nose was quite intimidating, even though she was only 5'1 and 105 lbs. Arbitrarily she would ask children if they wanted to get into the pot. She cackled wickedly, but she always gave the best treats to those brave children who would ask.

Those that weren't were usually chased down by my Grandpa and given one anyway.

My siblings and I would dress up as ghouls or vampires and work the haunted house. One of the good things about living in an area with two states that are next to each other is Trick-or-Treating was on two different nights, and we would Trick-or-Treat at the Grandparent's house in the next state one night, and help my parents scare the crap out of little kids the next.

Trick-or-Treating with my parents was unusual to say the least, as they Trick-or-Treated right along with us. My Dad is 6'5 and would wear a full Gorilla costume, pillow case in hand. My Mom would be different things each year, but my favorite was when she dressed up as a movie star, as she really did look like a movie star.

My Dad would pick her up and she would scream that King Kong had her. This amused some, and received more then it's fair share of dirty or disgusted looks from others. My parents have never been the type to care what anyone thinks. Obviously.

When we got back to our house our parent's had to "check" our candy, and it was amazing how Snickers bars were always the ones that had razor blades in them. The bags always were given back to us with at least half the candy missing, and for some odd reason we were never allowed to watch as they went through it. Must be because they didn't want us traumatized by how much candy they stole I mean by how many people out there wanted to hurt little children.

We would then drink hot apple cider, and if ON TV (my God, does anyone remember that?) had a scary movie on we would gather up under a comforter on the couch and watch. Before we went do bed my Dad would tell us a scary story, insuring that he would at some point and time have three children sleeping in their bed before the night was thru.

My Mom and my cousin's birthday were both in the first week of November, so they always celebrated with a big Halloween Extravaganza the weekend of Halloween. I'm not sure what happened at these Extravaganza's as we were shipped off to the Grandparent's house for the night. I can only imagine...Wait...No, I don't want to imagine.

So we needed at least 3 nights to celebrate Halloween...You should see how long it takes the original party people to celebrate a birthday...

Happy Halloween everyone! Be safe, be careful, but always have fun!