Halloween

Halloween has become a holiday for adults as much as for children.

Kids still dress up in costumes and go trick-or-treating like when I was a kid, but adults often dress up in scary costumes and go drinking. The drinking part doesn’t bother me so much, but the resulting drinking and driving bothers the hell out of me; so I usually stay home or if I go out, I appoint myself the designated driver.

I don’t remember Halloween parties I went to in college or the few years afterwards. I was in a fraternity and drank a lot then. Memory is a little faded and jaded.

But there are two later Halloweens I do remember vividly.

One, in the early 1990s, was at a nudist club facility. Really. I was the DJ. I’ll leave this to your imagination, other than to say that the woman dressed as Lady Godiva was quite memorable. Her blond hair really was that long and she wore gold body paint and a smile. That’s all.

The other involved my own costume. I dressed as Ronald Reagan, sort of. He was still President then. I wore a full-face Reagan mask, white dress shirt, old-man-style tie, overcoat, black shoes, black socks … and instead of pants, I wore boxer shorts with hearts painted on them and hung a banana in a strategic spot. I walked around the party flashing people. I said nothing and did nothing to reveal my true identity, other than to whisper my name to the party hosts so they knew I was someone they knew. I walked up to people and wrote notes to them, indicating that I knew them. I did this for two hours. Nobody guessed my identity and I got laughter and applause when I finally removed the mask.

It appears there is a pattern in my Halloween memories. I hope that pattern didn’t exist during the years I can’t remember.

Trick or treat!?!