Boo! Did I scare you?

Halloween 2011 will soon be upon us. I have to admit that of all the holidays . . . 4th of July, Passover, Xmas and even Thanksgiving, none of them get my heart racing like All Saints Day aka All Soul's Day aka Halloween. Tell me any other holiday where candy flows freely, where I can scarf down as many Almond Joys and I can get my hands on, where I can dress like a lunatic and smear my face with make-up that makes no sense at all, where my grandson tightly holds onto my hand because a bloody mouthed vampire scares him. No Halloween is like no other holiday.
But by the looks of the houses around me, I'm not alone. We have cob webs aplenty in every color of the rainbow, black widow spiders that range from one inch to five feet who drape themselves all around doors, windows and trees.
Don't even get me started on the number of ghosts, gravestone markers, pumpkins and flashing lights that will light up the night.
Soon I'll make my Costco run and I hope that ten extra large bags of candy will be enough.
Trick or Treat to all my fellow Halloween enthusiasts.

Scary movies of my youth

With Halloween only 24 hours away, I gave some thought to which movies had scared the be'gibbers out of me. I instantly came up with two: House on a Haunted Hill was number 1. I saw this film with I was young. My older brother and I attended an afternoon matinee. House on a Haunted Hill was one of the first movies that you had to wear 3-D glasses to really appreciate. There were 13 ghosts who were invisible unless you dawned on the cardboard glasses. I don't remember much about the plot . . . other than it scared my brother and I so much, he got hives, and I spent the night awake. One scene in particular was of a beautiful lace covered canopy bed and a person blissfully in dreamland. THEN the music swelled and the canopy came down. The person woke up, but only long enough for the scene to end. YIKES!
#2 Tales of the Crypt. I'm not talking about those remakes . . . I'm talking about the original. Two girlfriends and I (Nancy and Donna), were in the mood to get scared, so we went to see it. Again, I don't remember much of the plot. There were three short stories, but one of them was about a person who was granted wishes. This sounds lovely, but think carefully. There was an accident and someone was dying. The person who was granted the wishes wished that the injured person would not die . . . and they didn't. BUT the wisher forgot to ask for a healthy recover, so the victim remained in horrible pain FOR ETERNITY. When the three of us came out of the movie, we interlocked our arms and filled with terror, walked to our car.
I don't watch scary movies anymore. Life is tricky enough.

Halloween - I love it!

We all know why children adore Halloween . . . Snicker bars, M&Ms, Almond Joys(my favorite), but it's more . . . much more. There's the great costumes, the walking around and knocking on doors of strangers. There are throngs of people everywhere and the decorations. WOW!
But why do adults love this holiday? I can only answer for myself.
It is the abandonment of my inhibitions, not that I am all that inhibited. I am permitted to wear overdone makeup in obscene colors, rat my hair, if I want. Put on a black cape and try my hardest to scare children.
When my own children were young I would dress up as a mixture of Vampira and Morticia Adams. I wore a black vampire outfit and had my son's black and white rat scurry up and down my arm. She was friendly, but children were caught off guard. Years later when the rat died, kids would ask for her, but I would have to tell them gently that the rat was no more.
My sister and I even tried to replicate a Halloween scene from Roseanne. She'd hid in a box with only her head popping up from under a bowl that I kept lifting whenever a child would come to my door. She'd scream . . . the kids would scream - it was great.
When else can do you this . . . never! Just during Halloween.
I want to wish everyone a happy, scary, chocolate filled Halloween.
TRICK OR TREAT!