halloween rehash

It's busy times in the life of Curly McDimple. I have a high school reunion to attend this weekend and despite my low levels of school spirit and disinterest in anything other than, you know, myself, I somehow ended up on the reunion committee. That means lots of prep work in anticipation of the big 15th blowout... and lots of bitching on my part. Oh and yes, 15 years is an off-kilter anniversary but we were too disinterested and lazy to get our acts together five years ago. Deal.

My point, and I do have one, is that I have little time to blog these days. However, I do have time to rehash shit from my archives. Lucky you! Here's an excerpt from the Halloween story I posted two years ago. Now with artwork!

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Most people think I'm nuts because I don't really like dressing up. I get the same response when I tell them I don't like those crunchy things in between layers of ice-cream cake. I don't know why they react in such a way. I give them first crack before I touch my cake (remember, no dairy share). They totally benefit.

But if I do dress up, it's rather begrudgingly. I also assemble costumes that easily blend into normal clothes so that I can travel on the subway without comment. One year I put on army green pants, high-laced Doc Marten black boots and a white t-shirt (couldn't find a green one) and showed up to a party as Private Benjamin. I look nothing like Goldie Hawn so I made a "Hello, My Name is PRIVATE BENJAMIN" sticker. I rolled up my pants, slapped on the sticker, removed my coat right before entering and voila, instant transformation. It went over well.

My dislike of costumes must stem from an incident I had at an early age. When I was about seven-years-old, my mother got the idea from one of her coworkers to dress me as a crayon. I was asked to pick out my favorite color (at the time it was yellow) and we went to the store to buy big sheets of stiff yellow poster board (oak tag, if you're from Jersey). My father cut one of the pieces and formed it into a cone for the hat. I was given a black marker and told to write Crayola on the side and draw the squiggly lines, etc. When the big day came, the pointy cap was secured on my head with an elastic thingy and I was stapled into the yellow cylinder. I wore yellow pajamas underneath to avoid any yellow-peach confusion.

Remember when we were younger and the word on the street was that bees are attracted to the color yellow? I don't know about the rest of the country but we have a shit load of bees in Jersey in September and October. And they're all pissed off trying to get in their last stings before they die off (or go into a hive or whatever the hell they do in the winter). I got as a far as around the block before a bee started buzzing around me. I swatted at it a few times but it persisted. Finally, I decided to run from it. Um, not a smart idea considering my legs were mostly covered by a narrow tube. I can still remember the ripping sound. It wasn't even a clean break that could be fixed with Scotch tape. I ripped that muthafucka asunder.

I sadly walked back home and rang the bell. My mother came to the door thinking I was a trick-or-treater but instead of getting candy, I got a high-pitched "What on earth happened?!?!" She muttered and told me I was daft as she rummaged through her drawers to find a suitable replacement. She finally found a pair of pirate pants one of my older sisters wore a year or two before. Truth be told, I was a half-assed looking pirate because she couldn't find the hat, eyepatch or knife. In the end, all I was wearing was shredded jeans and a white shirt. I looked more like a castaway or someone victimized by a pirate.

But I still got lots of candy and did my yearly tradition of trading all of my Mary Janes in for the better candy in my Mom's bowl. The trade-in was the best part. I ditched all my bad candy and pennies for the good stuff. My rate of exchange benefited me rather generously, I might add. One penny = two boxes of candy corn or three Dum-Dum lollipops (cherry, preferably). My Mom made us remove Sugar Daddies, Now & Laters and Laffy Taffy from our bags because of their superior teeth-ruining properties. So we'd put those in the bowl in an uneven exchange for the Mom-approved (and much better) candy. Funny how she didn't seem to mind rotting some other kid's teeth.

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Happy Halloween!