Why I Hate Halloween

It's not like I don't do Halloween.  I think it's partially that my parents never celebrated the holiday.  But it's more like I don't do Halloween well.  I have never been creative enough to think up an idea.  And then I have to execute the idea, and I have no clue how to gather the material and turn them into a costume.

I'll give you a bad memory.  When I was in elementary school we'd always dress up for a special day celebrating Halloween.  We'd give candy to each other, and we'd all parade through our three classrooms.

But for those occasions we'd have to have a costume.  I just followed my brother's and parents' lead, go to the grocery store, and buy a costume.  You remember those ones where there's a mask and a shirt and pants you just put on?  Bought one every year.  Usually they are cartoon characters; I remember being Good Luck Bear one year, maybe GI Joe another.  Anyway, whenever Halloween rolled around, we had to remind my parents, and they'd take us to the grocery store to buy it.  And that continued, year after year.

Then, one year, maybe fifth grade, I noticed something.  In past years, I saw my other classmates also decked out in these store-bought, ready-to-wear Halloween costumes, and there were only a few people who "were so poor" they had to make up their own costume at home.  But in fifth grade, there were more people who came up with their own ideas.  Whoa, I thought, What did you all do?  When I did my parade, I felt very awkward that I had this plastic fucking mask on while my classmates seemed to be wearing their own clothes and pulling it off.

This pendulum swung all the way in the sixth grade, where there was nobody who wore a costume that was bought from a store except for me.  I really felt like an idiot for not being able to come up with an idea and instead needing to buy a costume, and that fear either created or cemented my disassociation with Halloween.

It continues to this day.  It's not that I'm scared that I can't come up with a more creative get-up; shit, man, all the girls do nowadays is dress up as a sluttier version of something or other.  (More and more, Halloween is becoming an excuse merely to let your inner whore out.)   It's also because I just can't commit any brainpower into crafting any pathetic idea I have.  I saw on my facebook that my friend is going as, get this, the Old Spice guy.  His current profile picture is of him trying out his Old Spice costume (his abs are painted on).  I don't want to see my friend with his shirt off, but that was a fucking awesome costume, and idea.  I could not have come up with something like that, let alone figure out what I needed to put it together.

So, I opt to not celebrate Halloween and run away from my bad memories instead of confronting them.  What did I do this Halloween?  I would blog about it, and in fact I intended to blog about it, but my writing sent me down this path, and my blog post is now so long that I'll just post about what I did tonight maybe tomorrow or some other day.  Hell, what I did to avoid trick-or-treaters this Halloween isn't worth a post, it just serves as an ending to what is now another story, one I originally wanted to blog about here.