Halloween: chocolate, costumes and shenanigans

Graphic by Phil Waheed

The overpriced costumes, smell of face paint, and miniature chocolates that make you feel less guilty about eating them, and the parties — oh Halloween, how wonderful you are.

Halloween is one of those commercial holidays that is hard to hate, because it can be so darn fun for just about anyone, regardless or their age or their personality. It is also one of those holidays that comes with ridiculous stories of costume malfunctions as a child and drunken adventures as a teen.

I still remember my triumphant 15 minutes of fame in elementary school, when I wrote a Halloween carol and had to sing it to the tune of  “Gloria in excelsis Deo.” Laugh all you want, but it was so good that my teacher made the whole class learn it. We had to sing it in front of the whole school and our parents at the Halloween assembly. Halloween could have made me a rockstar recording artist! My non-existent celebrity career aside, Halloween is a holiday where something ridiculous is bound to happen. I asked for people to share their funniest Halloween experiences, and here are some of the responses Concordians gave me:

I had a bit too much to drink at a Halloween party and spotted a guy in a Batman suit, and I was dressed as a witch. So, being in a drunken state, I of course, logically put bat + witch together = bat is witch’s pet. Hence, I went up to him and said, “You are my pet, Mr. Bat. I command you to fly!” and took some random thing I found at this house party, used it as a wand, and started waving it in front of him. “FLY MR. BAT. FLY, FLYYYY.”  He ACTUALLY began flapping his arms. We both began hysterically laughing so much that we fell on top of each other and broke the crystal stick-thingy…not sure what it was really. Good thing the kid who hosted the house party never found out it was me. I would have probably paid a good sum.

-Barbara Madimenos

So, right, it was cold as shit. And my friend was dressed as a ninja, even though he didn’t plan out his costume properly so it was kind of just a black tablecloth wrapped all around him in weird ways. So anyway we get our candy at a bunch of places and its all going great and then he tried to adjust the costume in the middle of the street and ended up taking it apart and the tablecloth just fell away, and he started crying there in his underwear. I think we were probably about six.

I just remember laughing at him even though he was obviously upset.

-Anonymous

Some of my best Halloween memories as a kid were my costumes. I love dressing up, and even if I usually work on Halloween I still put together a costume to wear. Now, I grew up in an Italian household, and money was sometimes tight, so splurging on an expensive Halloween costume for your 4-year-old wasn’t really a priority. But my parents never made me miss out on anything, and my mother took it into her own hands to make some of my costumes. They were endearing in the sense that people had no idea what the hell I was supposed to be. I remember one year my clown costume turned into a wizard costume somehow, put together with some weird potato sack material and glitter…lots of glitter. I was a young female clown wizard.

-Casandra De Masi

A friend of mine had a stepmom who put on these elaborate haunted houses and I would act for them. One year I was a fortune teller, another year I was a person who had no legs, with blood spewing out all around me.  We were rewarded with huge chocolate bars. It is safe to say that some of my best halloween memories were from acting in these haunted houses…and scaring people.

 

          – Amanda Shore

Graphic by Phil Waheed

 

So, my elementary school went on a field trip to a local high school. This high school always put on this crazy haunted house…well it was crazy to a 10-year-old. As a kid I was always a bit of a scaredy-cat and I hated small, dark spaces. However, everyone else was going into this haunted house, so I didn’t want to be left out. I ended up going in with one of my teachers behind me. I passed the exorcism and Frankenstein and I thought “hmm…well this isn’t so bad.” The second part was worse. The only light was from glowsticks on the ground, and this guy just jumped out of nowhere and grabbed my shoulders, shaking them roughly. I flipped out and started screaming, and I couldn’t stop. Before I knew it tears were streaming down my face and they had to secretly take me out by the emergency exit. Not my proudest moment.

However, it wasn’t as bad as the girls after me. They were so scared that they grabbed onto the walls, bringing them all down. The haunted house had to be closed for repair. Safe to say we were not invited back the next year.

 

-Anonymous

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