Halloween

So last week we went on vacation, and now I am just trying to catch up. I had fifty submissions to read for Shadows & Light, the library book sale was this week, and I have a library “basic skills” class to complete online. Due to a slight mix up on my part, the class started during my vacation which means I have two assignments and a quiz to do by the end of the day, which of course, being the great procrastinator that I am, means that it is time for me to write a rambling blog about Halloween that doesn’t really have much of a point. Other than being my 100th post, cue the music and confetti!

Even though I am sitting in a room with every single wall decorated for Halloween what really made me think of it was that it snowed for a little bit yesterday. It wasn’t much of a snow, it was 40 degrees or about 4 degrees Celsius, and the snow only lasted for two minutes.

Why do I associate snow with Halloween? Because it snowed on every Halloween except one when I was a kid. I would spend a month agonizing over my costume and arguing with the other children over who had the “coolest costume” only to cover the whole fucking thing up with a heavy winter coat and snow boots.

Now I realize that the whole thing was just another chapter in the epic struggle of man versus nature, but as a kid it kind of pissed me off, as it did for the other children. When kids went out and played “tricks” egging houses, smashing jack-o-lanterns, and covering trees in toilet paper they had a damn good reason.

The one Halloween it didn’t snow I was probably too old to go trick or treating. I had decided not to go, but I got out of school and it was 70 degrees, so I dug through my closet till I found a cowboy hat and a toy gun. It was a pretty bad costume considering the closest thing I had to a western shirt was a button up Hawaiian print shirt, but the candy that Halloween was oh so sweet and plentiful. It was a truly magical Halloween. Every Jack-o-lantern was safe. No trees were covered in diaphanous strands of Charmin, and not a single house was covered in the yellow ichor of shattered baby chickens.

Flash forward 18 years to today. It is four days until All Hallow’s Eve. It is only 35 degrees, the sky is cloudy. I am preparing myself to have my home assaulted by children who have been frustrated and pushed to their limit by mother nature. Mother nature doesn’t care how badly they want to be a pretty fairy, or how strong they feel in their Superman costume, she just wants to ruin their good time. I feel bad for them, I have a feeling that a whole bunch of children are going to learn firsthand what a bitch mother nature can be, and by logical extrapolation what a real bitch life can be.