gender-benders, hairy things, & nuns who do jell-o shots.
i almost posted the puking pumpkin, but i'm sure you've seen it before. still, it never fails to make me laugh. a friend e-mailed it to me on halloween '01, w/ the heading: "when pumpkins drink too much". i was at the library when i opened the e-mail and started laughing aloud. the person sitting at the computer beside me looked over at my screen and started laughing, too. but the librarian glared at us, ready to say "SHH!"
i didn't do anything special this year, but it was fun giving out candy. we got more trick-or-treaters than expected. so many cute kids! some of the most adorable ones are the really young kids who aren't old enough to actually know they're trick-or-treating. they bashfully stand at the door in their ladybug or spiderman costume (or their parents are holding them), and they have to be prompted to say "trick-or-treat", hold out their bags/baskets and say "thank you".
mary, shawn and i recently talked about what a shame it is that many schools have banned halloween costumes b/c it's not politically correct, it could traumatize some kids, etc. etc. i just remember all of that stuff as being a lot of harmless fun when i was a kid. there's so much creativity out there, although some years definitely brought trends, like punk rockers when i was in 5th grade. the neon hairspray never worked for me, though, b/c my hair is so dark and the best i could achieve was an orange glittery sheen on my dark brown-almost black hair.
i think i had the most fun in 4th grade, when i pulled off a gender-bending boy-george. my sister braided my hair and I borrowed a hat, skirt, guitar and heavy makeup, and looked like this (!). but the school costume contest winner was some kid who came as a jellybean jar by taping multi-colored balloons to herself and wrapping clear cellophane around them to make the jar. the runner up costume, however, was gross. it was this kid who dressed up as hairy skin b/c someone in his family worked at a salon. he made his costume by wearing a tan garbage bag with hair clippings glued to it. ew. creative, but... gross!
halloween in college let me explore some slutty inebriation that was off-limits in grade school. how can you beat dressing up as a slutty nun and doing orange vodka jell-o shots? in truth, i think jell-o shots have a frat-boy-like quality to them, and i haven't done them** since i was 19. if given a choice back then, i might have gone for pumpkin ale instead. regardless, i suppose a drunk nun would have been a drunk nun no matter what. and that is that.
