A history of Halloween. And me.

It's an interesting relationship I've always had with Halloween. To be truthful I had a love/hate relationship with it as a kid. I hated being scared. I have always hated scary movies. I was always the child at slumber parties when everyone was telling ghost stories who was either silently ugly-face crying in my sleeping bag or plugging my ears singing primary songs pretending to be asleep. TRUE STORY. I never liked being scared. You wanna see me raging mad, cursing like a sailor? Hide in my closet or something. (You might get punched in the face though.) Never liked amusement parks either. Still don't. I'm an adult now. I don't have to pretend. I used to pretend but now I don't care if you think I'm lame for it.

Of course I loved collecting the bag of loot each year and rotting my teeth out. I liked dressing up. In our house every year my mom would drag out the gray mouse ears and paint mouse faces on us. We'd all get in big baggy gray sweatsuits. My mom actually suggested just a few days ago that she could pull out the mouse ears again. I thought it was normal to dress as the same thing every year. I met Brandi. And when we were 12 we really started exploring the possibilities. We painted two huge cardboard boxes white and glued huge black dots on them. Yes, we were a pair of dice. Trick or treated with our stubby arms shooting out the sides. It was freezing. And cardboard isn't as warm as it looks.

I remember a particularly horrifying Halloween. When I was just a wee lass of 18 years, I sang in a band in Phoenix. I was the only girl. I mostly just sang songs but on occasion, when luck would have it, I would fake-play the keyboard. That's right, fake play. You didn't know there was such a talent, did you? The lead guy in the band would get pretty excited to tell me that he had his additional keyboard with him, and he liked the way I looked on it. But we didn't even bother to plug it in. I'd just stand up there, pounding away at the keys, Jerry Lee Lewis style. I did however get a $100 tip one night from a guy in the audience who told me, "You are really good on that keyboard." I knew at that moment I'd fake-play the keyboard anytime if that's what the people really wanted. It ceased being humiliating at that moment too, as I shoved the benji in my pocket. I started getting even more into it, throwing my foot up there on occasion and twirling around a time or two. Use your imagination. ANYWAY, back to Halloween. We played lots of cool venues but this particular night we were booked at a pretty ghetto club. I wasn't on the fake keyboard this night, only singing, but I was dressed up in a little cat-woman costume.

Big mistake. I should have been Tweedle Dee. There was one gentleman I remember very well, who followed me around all night yelling, "Here kitty kitty," in his nastiest most chester-molester voice. Did I happen to mention that his Halloween costume was not R-rated, but X-rated? Oh yes. I spent every break we had off stage quivering in the girls bathroom, asking women who would come in and out if he was lurking nearby. You can imagine the conversation when they'd ask, "Well, what does he look like?" Awful. (Little did I know then that he would be the father of my children. What? You've never heard that's how Jason and I met? Oh my gosh can you even imagine. No, no that's a lie, throw it out of your mind. I apologize for going there, sweet hubby. I do still have nightmares about that guy though. I cried when I got home that night.)

Then came Jason into my life, for real this time. Halloween has never been the same. A serious Halloween/costume enthusiast. He starts talking about it in like June. We talk about a million different ideas, throw a million out, and the week of Halloween scramble like crazy to figure it out.

We were Jamaicans 3 years ago. Lame, I know. But we were engaged and too seriously obsessed with each other to plan much ahead. Bought the hats on this cruise to Cozumel. In fact, I think everyone got their costumes in Cozumel, including Chip.

Grease lightning followed.

Then came Peter and Captain. And I must say, kissing him with a mustache and long curly black hair made me feel like I was kissing some handsome exotic stranger. And it was really quite invigorating! I had a hard time letting him return that wig to the costume shop. Kate, I know you must have felt the exact same thing for Kent in that Napoleon Dynamite get-up.

So I have come to like the holiday a bit more. It will undoubtedly get better as our babies get bigger. Of course, some things about it still baffle me a bit, you know the phenomenon mentioned in the movie Mean Girls. Women dressed in the very original, very classy playboy bunny thong-tard costume when they seldomly bare an ankle the rest of the year? Weirds me out that it still happens when we're married and moms. And maybe you thought I'd tell you what we are planning for this year?! You really think I'd spoil the secret?! Forget it! (We have no clue. Any ideas?)