HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. When I was a kid my brother and I made a haunted trail in the woods behind our house, the Trail of Terror, and had the neighborhood come through. Our second year we got a little ambitious and planted a couple of kids in the audience who we would pull out on the trail as if they had been abducted, terror ensued. I remember one particularly whiney kid complained that my brother ruined his coat with an oil stain when he got too close with the chainless chainsaw. You all will have to fill me in on what the trite, ubiquitous costume is for this year. The George Bush mask? I remember one year in college several would-be-clever philistines spent a month growing out beards to go as Richie Tenenbaum from the film, The Royal Tenenbaums. Too bad they showed up to a party with like fourteen other Richie Tenenbaums. That year I went as a cardboard robot on rollerskates-- still my all-time favorite costume. Another year I made a horrid costume interpretation mistake: I went to a concert on Halloween night in which everyone was in costume. While waiting in the venue’s lobby, I saw a guy in what I thought was a brilliant Stephen Hawking costume! I was awestruck at the lengths this guy must have gone through to get one of those remote control wheelchairs, he even wore the obligatory sweater and tie with blue blazer, just like Stephen Hawking!
I had worked up the nerve to go over and offer my regards for a job well done, but my buddy stopped me short, insisting the guy’s mannerisms were too real to be a costume. I game him the benefit of the doubt, but I still left thinking I had been in the presence of a true Halloween Genius. Month’s later, at the same concert venue, I saw the same guy in the wheelchair.