Halloween- A Retrospective

As Halloween approaches, I can't help but think back to the various phases I went through on Halloween, dating back to my time as a big fat baby. I think we all go through similar phases at various Halloweens.

1.) Baby phase-Somebody dresses you as something cute and innocuous, like a punkin' or a princess. (Side note: One time, I saw a baby dressed as a potato. It's remarkable how much babies look like potatoes.) You go to like 4 houses because you can't say "Trick-or Treat" and your parents want to get home because it's cold and they have already bought a large bag of Reeses to supplement your pathetic 4 house haul.

2.) Dinosaur phase-My mom made me a gigantic dinosaur costume complete with a puffy, 3 foot long tail that left a swath of destruction in it's wake. I'd have to wear this on the bus which meant that every 4th kid was sure to get a mouthful of dinosaur ass on my way down the aisle. It was a miracle I didn't get the crap kicked out of me. I was like the kid who brought his cello on the bus. Didn't you always want to beat him over the head with his stupid cello? I sure did.

3.) Victim of Jason Voorhees phase-This seemed to be my costume a lot. You could go to The Fun Shop at Knollwood and get fake blood and fake scars and fake injuries and stuff. School hated this costume because they said it promoted murdering people. The real problem was that the fake blood would drip all over the place and make a god awful mess and the janitors (who always seemed to be dressed like morbidly obese versions of the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz) had a hard time cleaning it up

4.) Nothing Part I-Here's where I decided I was too old to put much effort into a costume, but I still wanted candy, and the opportunity to roam around with my friends and wreak havoc on pumpkins and leaf bags throughout the neighboorhood. So I'd draw on my face with marker, or put pantyhose over my head, even though that pretty much made me a burglar and not a trick or treater, and head out. The adults never looked too thrilled.

Adult: What are you supposed to be?
Us: Burglars who want candy, duh.
Adult: Hmm, not much of a costume.
Us: You're passing out individually wrapped tic tacs. You don't deserve more than this. And I'm going to stab your leaf bags for fun later.

5.) Nothing Part II- Some high schooler would have a party, and some people would dress up. I would show up as me, not have fun, and leave. On my way home I would search for houses where the people had foolishly left out a big bowl of candy, and if I found one I would take the candy (and the bowl) and drive home. People who blatently ask to get robbed should have their wishes granted. Long live Jombie.

6.) Pirate phase-This was my college costume, and I have to admit that I looked pretty swarthy. The parties were fun, people got out of control, and all girl costumes took the form of a regular occupation preceded by the word "Slutty", as in "Slutty Nurse," "Slutty Teacher," "Slutty Janet Reno," and in some cases, "Slutty Slut." The only problem was that the pants of my costume were very tight and my junk was prominently poking out. I tried padding the pants with toilet paper but this just made me look like a pirate with a wide and lumpy frontbutt. "Yarr, check out me frontbutt!" is not a phrase a pirate should ever utter.

7.) Nothing III-These are the parties you have once you get older. Nobody does crazy stuff anymore, and basically people just sit around and talk about work. This is the only time you might actually see Charlie Chaplin talking to the Joker about mutual funds. After leaving a party like this you might find yourself thinking, "Gee, there sure are a lot of douchebags walking around."

8.) Dad-Basically beginning the cycle all over. We're taking the kids to the mall to trick or treat, how ghetto are we?

Kid (Looking hopeful): Trick or treat!
Mall Employee: Here ya go. $1 off a pedicure.

We also have a large bag of Reeses that we are not passing out to anyone except our own mouths.
I hope my life goes in a direction so that eventually when I'm old I can become:

9.) Scary dude who becomes even scarier on Halloween. Imagine how fun it would be if all the kids thought you were a maniac escaped from the asylum. I would definitely perpetuate this myth. Shoot I might even kidnap somebody from the neighborhood, just for the sake of authenticity. Maybe I already have. BOO!!

Pants or no Pants

I was at the gym this morning, in the locker room where all the nudists hang out, when I noticed a guy prancing around butt naked. The unusual thing about this fella is that he had a large roll of stomach fat that completely covered and enveloped his junk. It was like he had skin underpants. He had obviously lost a large amount of weight, but he either didn't have the money to get that surgery where they lop off all your excess skin and give it to charity, or he was like "Fuck it, I got me some skin underpants now."

Strangely, I felt a little envious towards this guy, because he really didn't even need pants anymore, and I've always felt that pants kind of got in the way. I don't think I've ever had a pair of pants that I considered comfortable. One time I thought I had found a really comfy pair but they were in the girl bin at Kmart, and even I have some standards. If you ever see me wearing teal colored girl sweatpants from the Kmart bin, you will officially know that I have given up on looking presentable.

I think if I was President, I would institute a no pants policy for the country. We'd call it "The Donald Duck Rule" and if you were embarrassed that your paraphernilia was hanging out the bottom you could always wear a really long shirt, or a Charles Ingalls style nightgown. In fact, I think that would be preferable since really there's nothing uglier than a weiner. A bunch of exposed weiners might hurt our country's morale and with the economy being in a shambles, that's not what we need. It might get a little bit cold in the winter, but, from what I understand, all you need is a stocking cap and you can't possibly get cold.

This is probably reason #6,186 that I will never become President, but believe me, a pantsless society is a peaceful society. How many wars have been started by folks with no pants? Probably no more than 4.

I have the stupidest dreams.

I've come to the conclusion that I may have the most stupid and pointless dreams in the history of people or dreams. I've heard it said that dreams are whispers from the soul. If that is the case, I must have a pretty stupid soul. I'd hate to think that when I die, the only remnant left of me is my moron soul. I once saw a person who was supposedly an expert on interpreting dreams. From what I could gather, any dream you have can be interpreting as meaning that you are an in-the-closet homosexual.

Me: So here's what I dreamt. (Explains pointless dream.)
Dream Interpreter: Hmm. Very interesting. Perhaps you're gay.
Me: Um.....

Basically all my dreams fall into 4 categories, none of which are very interesting.

1.) Falling on purpose- I've heard that many people have dreams where they are falling and it's scary and they wake up all sweaty and pee soaked. It's supposed to represent a loss of control of something in your life. Not me. I'll be riding a zip cord across the Grand Canyon and for no good reason I'll just let go. Then I float down. Not very scary at all.

2.) Pointless conspiracy theories-The other night I dreamt that I had noticed that there were no people in the world named "Maurice" anymore. Nobody would tell me why. Government conspiracy. I've also dreamt that many people were riding around on those bicycles with enormous front wheels, like the type you'd see in a picture from the 1900 World's Fair, and I couldn't figure out how they got all the way up to the seat. Nobody would tell me. Government conspiracy. Dumb.

3.) Plots for really horrible movies- Last night I dreamt that I was going to school at a Historically Black College. I was having a tough time adjusting to being a minority and I was about to quit when a kind but firm professor took me under her wing and taught me the confidence to succeed. It was kind of like Finding Forrester in reverse.

4.) Random things-These are the dreams I have most often. It's just life happening. I really don't even need to be asleep to see these things. I could just go to the mall.
.....A guy eats a sandwich
.....Some kids run around
.....A dog goes by
.....A girl yells at her mom
.....Somebody drops a nickel on the ground.
Then I wake up and wonder what the possible point of dreaming about that was.

Someday maybe I'll have a great dream. Probably not though.

Eyes playing tricks on Me.

This morning I mistook a squirrel for a car. I was backing out of my driveway and from my peripheral vision I thought I saw a large object, presumably a car, zooming towards me. So I hit my brakes and looked over, and all I saw was a squirrel running through my yard. I started wondering if I was retarded, but then I realized that it was just my eyes playing tricks on me again.

My eyes like to fool me every so often. They think it's funny. My eyes are jerks!! Like my eyes will spot a girl from like 100 feet away and send a message to my brain that says, "She's Hot!" So then I'll wander closer, trying my best to be inconspicuous and usually failing, and I'll get close and realize either,
a) She's not hot at all
b) She's sort of hot, but in a skanky, hookery, give-you-the-clap kind of way
c) She's a dude

Sometimes my eyes trick me into thinking I see balls (insert joke here). Whenever I'm out hiking, one of my favorite things is finding a ball of some sort and keeping it. Usually it's a golf ball or a tennis ball, but one time I found a giant rubber ball and I dribbled it down the street for a while until I realized that I looked like an idiot. So since I'm always on the look out for balls, my eyes fool me into thinking that things like leaves, chunks of rubber, and fossilized dog turds are in fact balls. It's always very disappointing to think you have found a ball, and then you pick it up and it's a fossilized turd. (Side note: You should wash your hands if this happens. BEFORE you eat Chipotle. That's a lesson I don't need to learn twice.)

There's really no way to get back at your eyes either. You can't poke them, you'd just be hurting yourself, and if you blindfold them, you are also blind. Yep, your eyes got you right where they want you. Jerks!

The Hotness Test

I have found the best barometer in the world to let you know how attractive you are. It happened by accident, but it is 100% accurate. It goes like this:

Step 1: Go to a restaurant and wait. You may have to go to many restaurants for many years, but stay positive...

Step 2: Wait for a girl who has mistaken you for her boyfriend to come up and scream at you in front of the patrons and waiters.

Step 3: Look at her. If she is hot, you are hot. If she is ugly, you are ugly. If she is sober, she is insane. If she is naked, she is VERY insane.

Step 4: Complain to manager, receive discount on Szechuan Long Beans.

Step 5: Resume eating while shrugging shoulders every 13 seconds to help convey message that insane naked person was indeed a stranger.

As I mentioned, this series of steps is 100% accurate. It's just rare. I was at PF Chang's not long ago, enjoying some gourmet Chinese cuisine. For argument's sake, let's say I was eating Szechuan Long Beans. All of a sudden, I hear a ruckus. Since ruckuses seem to follow me like stray dogs, I pay no attention. The ruckus gets louder and closer and I hear a voice say, "GREG??" Since I am not Greg, I still pay no attention. Soon, the ruckus is right beside me. "GREG, WHAT THE HELL??" I look up and an angry woman is glaring at me, seething. I have a mouthful of long beans and I am still not Greg. I say nothing. "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU!!" She is very angry. She smells like smoke. I am worried. I swallow my long beans and look around. People are looking at me. I do not like this. I quickly scan my brain for anybody I've interacted with who might be justified in angrily calling me Greg. I can't think of anyone. "AND WHO IS THIS?" She points at my wife. I compose myself long enough to say, "What are you talking about?" She says, "OHMIGOD" and stomps out. I stare at the air for a long time. I stare at my fingers for a while too. People are still looking at me. I shrug my shoulders 4 million times while I resume eating.

Now after the initial shock of it all, I began to take account of what had transpired. A girl mistook me for somebody she was involved with. She was not too bad looking. She looked a little like she may have gone on a long crack binge at some point, but not too recently. It was OK. I felt good about myself. If she had looked like Kathy Bates, I would have felt much worse. And that's how it works. Flawless. I am attractive enough to date crazy people. That's all I really needed.

Non-stop Talkers

You know what I really enjoy? There's always somebody in your family or circle of friends that is just a nonstop, stream-of-consciousness talker. Somebody not very exciting at all. Somebody who just talks and talks and talks to whoever will listen, and even if everybody falls over dead, they would only pause to ask why everybody was laying on the ground, and then continue talking. But then every once in a while, this person accidentally reveals some deeply personal part of their life, and that is FUN!!

"So, yeah, I was at Cub Foods yesterday, and I bought some eggs and the boy who rang me up said "$4.68" and I thought to myself "that can't be" and so after I paid I noticed he had charged me for 3 cartons of eggs instead of one and so I went and told him and he told me to go to the service center for a refund and he didn't even say sorry and I had paid with my credit card, the one that has a picture of my cats on it, so instead I just went back and got 2 more cartons of eggs and left with them and I was going to make a quiche but now I have all these extra eggs and one of them is a little brown and it looks like it's about to hatch like those chicks in incubators at the State Fair which I've decided I'm not going to anymore because it's just too crowded and the last time I was there a man made fun of my pants because I had spilled french fry grease all down the front, but I didn't spill it at the fair, it was before the fair, so what was he talking about? Did you know bums and ugly people live at the fairgrounds all year round? I was down there trying to find Bandanna Square because my friend told me they had a store that sold only Green Jello there and I wanted some because green jello is great for cooking when I cook I like jello and chicken and maybe some Green Bean Casserole. Why is it sometimes called Casserole and sometimes called Hotdish? Who knows? Maybe the bums and ugly people who live at the fairgrounds. They looked really angry to be living there, and maybe it was because it was cold or they were mad at how bad their lives were but the only person I ever saw look that mad was my dad. Did you know he used to rape me about 4 or 5 times a week from the time I was 8 until yesterday, which is when I was at Cub Foods buying eggs......."

Usually there is no pause or embarrassment, the flow just keeps flowing. I love that...