Monday, October 1, 2007

My devil's on rollerskates, down at the roller rink

It's officially October, which means that Hallowe'en is just around the corner! Hallowe'en is one of my favourite days of the year. I love, love, love costumes and getting dressed up. A great deal of thought and care must go into choosing and putting together the perfect festive ensemble. When I was a little girl, we would throw a Hallowe'en party at my house every year. My friends and I would go all out with our costumes and push the creative boundaries trying to out do one another. We carved pumpkins and played games. We decorated apples while the pumpkin seeds baked in the oven. I have such fond memories of those parties and all of the incredible costumes that we came up with. Another tradition was the annual 'Hallowe'en Spooktacular' event at my elementary school. It was a carnival of haunted houses, cake walks and a dunk tank. The whole gymnasium was decorated with ghoulish ghosts, spider webs, jack-o-lanterns, black and orange streamers and balloons. I can remember looking so forward to this event; the sweet smell of caramel corn and cotton candy in the air, and the excitement of showing off my costume. All of these things plus "trick or treating" on a cool autumn evening, feet shuffling through the fallen leaves, and then coming home with a bag of tasty treats made Hallowe'en the best holiday ever in my book. Then again, I would have just settled for getting dressed up! Maybe one day I will finally get my big break on Saturday Night Live. That's my dream job because then every night could be a new costume and a new character.

In the movie Mean Girls, it's said that, "In Girl World, Hallowe'en is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it." That is pretty true. Every year you see the classics; the slutty witches, nurses, cats, devils, Playboy bunnies. And I can't say that in the past I haven't played it up a little bit too. Hell, many of those costumes I have worn myself. And a couple of years ago, my 'Little Red Riding Hood' costume looked more like 'Little Red Riding Ho'. This year, I think that something brilliant is in order. Tonight I have been scavenging through my tickle trunk in search of inspiration. That's right, no lame-o "costume in a bag" for me. This year, I'm going to create a masterpiece.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love Halloween too. Actually I love everything about the fall.

PatZ said...

pray to Mr. Dressup and you'll hae no trouble.

Jennifer Robertson said...

oh Mr.Dressup...what a huge fan I once was. I even went to see him live when I was a kid. hehe.

Anonymous said...

Being the resident American in Tokyo, I started taking it upon myself to throw home costume parties here in Japan and drag all the Japanese over. It's still not a very big holiday over here -- but it's so much fun that I wanted to get everyone in on it. Last year was done on more of a whim than anything else but everyone seemed to have so much fun, and we all got to meet some many new interesting people, that the wifey and I decided to do it again this year. The Japanese aren't really prone to throwing home parties as well by the way, which makes it all the more interesting.

We really want it to be a annual thing. Its going to be a bit tough this year trying to simultaneously handle the newborn, but I think we should be able to work something out. I just somehow need to find the time to get a costume. I guess first I need to get some ideas together.

Jennifer Robertson said...

That's so cool Scott. It's so much fun to share traditions with people who are just learning about them! Hope that you guys can put together something for this year. I remember when I was 17 and we had Italian exchange students visiting over Halloween. We took them to Value Village to get costumes and they went crazy! The Halloween dance at our highschool was a highlight for all of them as they had never celebrated the holiday before!