The older I get, the more introverted I get—and the less likely I am to come to your Halloween party.
I used to love Halloween. As far back as I remember, Halloween was a major event for my family: pumpkin pie, decorations, jack-o-lanterns—my dad, who was an artist by profession, carved gloriously creative pumpkins, incorporating that creepy glow you get by peeling off the skin rather than cutting all the way through (and this was long before Walmart sold pumpkin stencils).
And home-made costumes—witness (in the picture, above) my brother and me as Tom and Huck, complete with straw hats and corn cob pipes, ready to go trick-or-treating in the neighborhood (not at the mall, as has become all too common today).
The costumes didn’t always work out. One year I tried to be The Mighty Thor, but I had trouble with my cape (a red towel that wouldn’t stay around my neck) and blue tights (awkward for a pre-teen boy). I also struggled a bit with Mjölnir, which I tried to craft from an axe handle and a cinder block.
I was apparently unworthy; I could barely even lift the thing.
In other cases, I did reasonably well. One year, I went to my church youth group’s costume party (we never would have called it a Halloween party! Get thee hence, Satan!) dressed as a mummy, wrapped head to toe in strips of bedsheet linen. Though I could barely move, I was sure it was my best costume yet; I was sure that everyone would wonder, who’s that in the mummy outfit?
Of course, everyone walked up, looked at my eyes, and said, “Oh, hi, Greg!”
For another church event, a friend and I donned muslin robes and matching black jackets with “Jesus and the Disciples Road Crew” patches, and carried around a basket of props for Jesus’ miracles: a loaf of bread, a fish, some water, the “first stone” (in case we came across anyone without sin). They took the group on a tour of church dignitaries’ homes, parading us through to the oohs and aahs of appreciative old people. At one house, we got stuck in the kitchen for fifteen or twenty minutes; just after I had handed the basket across the counter to my friend, the person in front of me turned around and asked, “Do you smell fish?”
Even in the working world, I managed to have a reasonable amount of fun dressing up. Look at all these smiles:
Another year, I showed up at a colleague’s Halloween party dressed as a homeless man—smelly clothes, newspaper shoes, ratty blanket, and resolute intent to stay in character—and almost got turned away. “I think you’re in the wrong place, man,” one of the guests told me as he and a couple others started to escort me back out to the street. Fortunately, a friend inside recognized me, so I didn’t have to break character and say, “Guys, it’s a costume party….”
I’m not sure what happened to my interest in the holiday. A decade ago, I’d have assumed that the interest was genetic. Indeed, my family still loves Halloween—so much so that they even held what was, in effect, Halloween in July, when they threw a Harry Potter-themed surprise party for one of my sister’s birthdays.
And while I felt a bit of a resurgence of interest when the kids were younger, it turns out that there’s a fairly limited window of opportunity there. When they’re too young, they don’t really know what’s going on—here I am with one kid old enough (Harry Potter!) to “get it” and the other not so much (so I’m wearing his lion suit on my head).
But sooner or later they reach an age where they pretty much only want the candy—and for as little work as possible (“I’m dressed as a high schooler, Dad!”).
And me? As I’ve done the past couple of years, I’ll dress up as an Uber driver for half the night, chauffeuring the younger to the other side of the highway to trick-or-treat in his mom’s neighborhood. And the rest of the night, I’ll referee at the door (“Don’t give them too many pieces of candy, or we’ll run out!”)
It’s not that I don’t like costumes. I do, though I’m afraid I’m most amused by the ones that drive my other sister crazy; she and I have had a disagreement about a certain goldfish costume, for example—a symptom of a more fundamental disagreement about the “dignity” (or lack thereof) of “sexy” costumes.
Nonetheless, I fear that I’ve become a bit too Scrooge-ish about Halloween. I think it’s like my dissertation: when I got disconnected from my support group—many in my cohort finished up and moved on, and then I moved up north—the motivation and interest just waned. Similarly, there’s not that much interest in Halloween around me: my family lives hours away; I don’t go to church (and even if I did, it would be creepy to be part of a youth group); far fewer of my colleagues dress up. There are even fewer kids trick-or-treating in the area.
So, yeah… no Halloween parties. Or, if I do find myself at one, I’ll probably end up dressed as a miserable introvert.
