Happy Hallofreakinween

Current mood: uncomfortable

No big shock to any of you who know me well, but I flipping hate Halloween. Nope, not the faith thing. I have just hated it since I was a kid. We can all blame it on the jackass family who lived down the street from my house growing up.

I grew up in the Sunburst Farms area of Glendale. It was a nice place to grow up. Most of the people around of us had some blend of barnyardery, there were wide streets great for learning to ride your bike without using handlebars and there were horse trails and wide alleyways for all kinds of fun. It could also be a little dark at times- especially at Halloween.

On the next block down, between 51st and 53rd and on the opposite side of the street there was a grey brick house with blue-ish grey trim. They had a courtyard near the front door and plenty of thick green vines growing up to the eaves of the house. In the daylight it was a lovely home with a perfectly manicured lawn and shrubery thanks to the regular irrigation schedule. On Halloween night it took on a different look alltogether. I wont go into it because I forgot to pick up Depends at the store yesterday.

Every year my mom or my brother would prod me to go up to the door of that house. Every year. And every year I would walk up to the double door with no porch light on and ring the door bell. Now, I shoulda knowed there was something up because I was NEVER allowed to ring a darkened door on Halloween, but every year they told me to do it and like a dummy I would go up and push the bell and then, I would wait.

I first would notice the lightning striking in the enormous picture window adjacent to the door. Maybe ten seconds later, the music would start. I don't so much remember the music itself, but the way it made me feel really wigged me out. And every year I would stand there and wait through it all. Every year, thinking that would be the year it wouldn't happen.

So every year it took about thirty seconds for the double doors to open at the same time with a thud. For some stupid reason those doors always creaked as they opened, which didn't serve to calm my nerves at all. And I stood there, in the darkness, looking into more darkness with creaky doors open and howly music with lightning happening inside the house waiting for what I knew was coming, every year.

Out of the darkness, every time, came the biggest hairiest gorilla holding a bowl of some of the finest candy handed out in all of Sunburst Farms. Stupid ape didn't ever try the bag toss approach to handing candy out. Nope. Jackassed monkey would stand there holding the bowl heaping and sometimes spilling over with awesome candy just waiting.

I was no fool. I knew if I reached out for that loot he would jerk me inside and eat me whole, costume and all. And it was always the same. I never reached. Every year I would see the bowl at my eye level and glance slowly upward at the tallest mammal I'd ever seen expecting all the while that my candy bag was his vegetarian appetizer to a very meaty me entree. So I would freeze. And he would look at me while I was lookin' at him. And I waited for him to throw the crap in my bag while he waited for me to take the crap from the bowl and neither of us would move.

Well, neither of us would move until I freaked out, every year. Something inside me would spring and the wail would begin and I would about face like nothing you've ever seen before and I would run. It must have been pretty funny to see a fat little girl in some adorable costume with long brown piggy tails waddle-running out of their courtyard destined for the safety of the sidewalk where her mother was (in hysterics, by the friggin' way), when halfway across the yard, every year, my graceful self would fall, spilling all my candy without even caring. And when I would get to my mother who was undoubtedly doing a really crappy job of trying to compose herself for my sake, she would tell me to go back because that damned gorilla would be standing there, at the gate of his courtyard with his head in one hand and a ginormous handfull of their bounty in the other.

I ain't no fool, Skippy. The only thing that creeped me out worse than the gorilla was the gorilla with no head.

So, every year (did I mention that this happened every year?) I would sob the rest of the way home, stopping at every other house with big tears in my eyes and boogers running from my nose with half my candy in my bag and my mother looking away to hide her stupid grin (sorry, Mom), while that stupid gorilla was standing at the edge of his courtyard with the rest of my candy in his yard.

And that, is why I hate Halloween.