Day 31: Halloween Day...

It's here! The countdown is complete, and Halloween is upon us! I'm actually surprised, yet very happy that I was able to complete the 31 days of Halloween countdown. I was a little worried I'd run out of things to post on, or just get tired of it.

I have to be honest though, I'm kind of relieved that it is over. It's a lot of work! But I enjoyed and, and am thinking of doing a 25 Days of Christmas come December. That should be fun.

You know it’s really strange…for someone that looks forward to Halloween the way I do, I don’t have very many memories of Halloween when I was young. I don’t really know where I got this near obsession with the holiday…it just kind of happened several years ago.

I was in late elementary school when I first started decorating my room for All Hallows Eve. I think that I knew I couldn’t trick-or-treat any longer, so in order to have some fun on Halloween, decorating was the next best thing.

Even then, they were old, crappy, left over decorations from my mom and dad’s collection. They were big, ugly cardboard cutouts that my mom had gotten on clearance after Halloween back in 1979. I wanted to decorate my room, for some reason, and she gave me all I needed.

Every year after that my collection seemed to grow a little bit. For several years I didn’t have a job, and only could get what my folks would buy more or hand down to me. I didn’t mind. By Jr. High I had a cheesy, yet still festive display. Complete with inflatable pumpkins, orange lights, and a strange fountain thing my mom bought me, I thought my Halloween decorations were awesome!

Looking back, they really sucked.

My friend Shaun and I would decorate our rooms every year, and we both had a strange obsession with Halloween specials. I started recording every special I could back in 1993. I remember recording one show in my room and lying under the kitchen table and watching another while my mom fixed something. Strangely, that is one of my earlier memories of Halloween.

I remember trick or treating, but nothing special about it. I remember this one lady used to give out apples and little things with bible verses. I always thought that was strange, and I guess I still do. I don’t really remember many of my costumes I had, but do remember waiting on the porch to go trick or treating but my mom and dad wouldn’t let me yet. It started at like 7:30 or something, and it was only 7:25. Figures.

I remember every Halloween I’d walk to my grandparent’s house and try to fool them. I’d change my voice and try to trick them into thinking I wasn’t there grandson. Which is all good, I suppose, but seeing photographs of my childhood costumes have me wondering how they wouldn’t know it was me. There were a few costumes that I had a little face paint and one or two where I didn’t wear a mask or any kind of makeup. Still, they played along.

After trick-or-treating, I remember going home and dumping my candy out on the floor so it could be “checked,” by my mom and dad. They said it was because people could put razor blades and what not in the candy, and it could hurt me real bad. But I am still convinced that them “checking” the candy was code for “picking out the candy they liked.”

After a couple of days the candy just gets gross. It didn’t matter if you were eating a tootsie roll or a snickers, for they all tasted funky from being mixed in a bag with all different kinds of other candies. Yuck…I still don’t like to think about that.

I don’t remember carving a pumpkin when I was young, but I know that I did every year. I don’t remember ever picking out a costume, but I know that I did.

I do remember my dad used to do Haunted Houses and he did one at our Elementary School. Think they could do that nowadays? Think not, and it’s a shame too.

I was too young to even want to go in, but recall my mom holding me and finding my dad so she could tell him something. He was dressed in all white and had white face paint on. Evidently he lead groups through the Haunted House. I just don’t know what he was supposed to be dressed up as.

One year my dad couldn’t do the Haunted House, but let others borrow some of the decorations and items he had. After Halloween, these items were never returned…and every year my dad would tell us his anger over that fact. To this day, I could ask my dad about the Haunted Houses he used to do, and I am certain the first thing out of his mouth would be, “I still don’t know what ever happened to that stuff or who took it…” He’d always say it was the “last time he’d let anyone use that stuff.” And he was right…he never had it again to loan out.

Sadly, That’s all I can remember about Halloween’s from long ago. I don’t know, maybe someday something else will come back to me. But until then, I’ll just take what I can get.

That's actually part of the reason why I wanted to do the 31 Days of Halloween, in hopes of creating some new traditions and memories, and perhaps remember a few along the way.

Now that's the countdown is complete and the big day is here, there's just one thing left to say...