Thankfully that’s over. Finally, no more advertisements, no more battles between evangelicals and secularists, no more tacky displays on peoples’ lawns.
I’m talking, of course, about Halloween.
Prologue
This had to be the longest Halloween I’ve ever experienced, and that’s largely due to the Ladybug. Early on in October, she noticed an exponential increase in the number of plastic pumpkins and desiccated corpses available for purchase at the local supermarket.
“What’s that?” she asked, pointing all all the macabre stuff.
“Halloween,” I informed her.
The Ladybug looked lost for a moment, but then her eyes narrowed to sparkling slits and her mouth curled up into a grin that actually extended past her ears. She only said one word, but that was all she needed to convey everything she needed to know:
“Caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaandy!”
That very afternoon, upon returning home, she ran straight to your room, flung open the closet door, and pulled out the ladybug costume she wore last Halloween. When I asked what she was doing, she hastily informed me that she was getting ready for Halloween, and could I please paint her nose black so we could skedaddle back to the mall for some caaaaaaaaaaaaandy.
“Um… Halloween’s not for while, Ladybug,” I said. “We have to wait.”
The little girl sighed, and then disrobed, put her ladybug supplies back in her closet, and slumped dejected in the living room to play with her dollies. I smiled, impressed with the mature way with which she handled that, and went back to putting the groceries away. A few minutes later, I felt a tug at my pants, and turned around to find her standing behind me, completely dressed in her Ladybug costume and her bumblebee candy bag.
“I waited,” she said. “Now let’s go do Halloween.”
Quantum mechanics, Disney edition
Eventually I was able to explain that we would have to wait several weeks for Halloween, and in the meantime we could choose a new Halloween costume. Initially, the Ladybug was excited about reprising her role from last Halloween, but as the month wore on she changed her mind, narrowing it down to two choices: Disney Princess or Butterfly.
She would vacillate between the two on an almost daily basis, which was cute in a protracted obsessive-compulsive episode sort of way. The Queen was in favor of the butterfly costume, partly because it continued with the entomological theme of the Ladybug and her previous costume, but mostly because she’d already purchased the shimmery butterfly wings and antennae headband. I was partial to the Disney Princess costume partly because I like to be contradictory, but mostly because I’m cheap: her grandmother had already bought it for her over summer.
And so the moth wore on, with the Ladybug happily prognosticating about all the candy she was going to get in her quantum costume — one that could exist alternately in its Disney Princess and Butterfly state. I briefly attempted to convince the Queen B and Ladybug that she should instead generalize: wear both costumes and go as a quantum superposition.
“You’re a dork,” was the Queen B’s assessment, and the matter was dropped.
Oddly enough, on October 23, a package arrived from the Ladybug’s aforementioned grandmother, and in it was a Tinkerbell costume. Based on the Ladybug’s expression, I’ll let you guess which costume won out:
So… the Ladybug would not be wearing her Disney Princess and Butterfly costumes simultaneously, as this is universally ridiculed as a stupid idea. Instead, the Ladybug would dress up as Tinkerbell.
…which is basically a Disney Princess costume with butterfly wings.
Infinite loop
The Ladybug’s daycare had an early Halloween Party on the 24th, a week before the real deal. There was little actual trick-or-treating per se; instead, it was mostly games and candy giveaways and a chance for parents to ooh and aah at little kids in costumes. There was a ring toss and a beanbag toss and a dartboard and a duck pond, the game the Ladybug fell for was the cakewalk.
If you’ve never seen one, the game consists of having the players circumnavigate a circle of numbered mats, accompanied by a CD playing Disney’s Most Profitable Hits. When the music stops, players must stand on one of the mats, much like musical chairs; but unlike musical chairs, in which a place is eliminated each round, in a cakewalk a prize is simply given to whoever is currently standing on a randomly determined number, after which the process is repeated. So whereas musical chairs requires some level of cunning, agility, and determination to win, a cakewalk merely requires sustained existence. In hindsight, I suppose that’s why the phrase “it’s a cakewalk” means what it means.
In this case, each prize consisted of a plate of various Halloween-themed treats, such as pumpkin-decorated cookies, or bat-shaped rice crispie treats, or a pitcher of fresh AB negative, that sort of thing.) The Ladybug had a knack for winning almost every time she played, and by the end of the night we were lugging around so many plates of cookies and cupcakes that it looked liked we’d just knocked over a bakery.
After two hours, the Ladybug was visibly worn out, grunting and wheezing as she dragged her bag of candy and her 1.6 metric tons of coffin-shaped cookies behind her as she went ’round and ’round the cakewalk. Eventually, she passed out, so the Queen B and I took to opportunity to scoop her up and say our goodbyes. We stuffed her candied crap in the back and carefully deposited her into her car seat, where she (of course) immediately woke up. She rubbed her eyes and took a deep breath, before asking a single question.
“Again?”
Buggin’ out
Later that night, she ate an entire bracelet made out of pure sugar. To say she was a little wired after that would be an understatement:
Stage-fright-night
When Halloween itself finally rolled around, we dressed the girl up as Tinkerbell again and headed over to the mall for its annual trick-or-treat spectacular. Unfortunately, over the course of the year I can only surmise that the deed to the mall was signed over to an occult version of Ebenezer Scrooge: less than a third of the stores this time round participated, and most of those that did required a purchase and a credit check before dispensing candy. Damn economy.
However, when life closes a coffin door, Samhein opens a window. Or something like that. See, this October has been unseasonably warm, and Halloween night itself was in the reasonably balmy mid-forties. That meant ideal trick-or-treating weather, so the Ladybug and I hit the pavement in search of candy.
The Ladybug was alternately fascinated and horrified by her costumed comrades, pointing out Princesses and Butterflies or shirking away from Jokers and Darth Vaders as she passed them. I have to admit that I was rather disappointed with the costumes this year. Every kid I saw — mine included, admittedly — was wearing some off-the-rack costume glorifying some commercial property. Where were the homemade costumes built from cardboard and PCV pipes and craft paint? Yeah, Spider-Man might be the “it” thing, but can anything be cooler than this?
I think not.
Anyways, the Ladybug and I spent much of the week leading up to Halloween going over the basics of Halloween etiquette, specifically, saying “Trick or teat” to initiate the transfer of candy, and then “Happy Halloween” upon the completion of said transfer. The Ladybug happy repeated these phrases, reciting “Trick or treatin'” and “Happy Howwoween” over and over.
It is then, of course, no surprise that when she actually knocked on the first door, she got stage fright. An elderly woman opened the door and the Ladybug froze, mutely holding up her candy bag.
“What do you say?” I prompted.
The Ladybug looked at me for a moment, and then nodded her head. Turning to the lady, she announced, “Please lady, can I have some candy, pleeeeease?”
Epilogue
The following morning the Ladybug demanded to wear her Tinkerbell costume, and the Queen B and I happily consented. She then demanded pancakes, to which the Queen B grumpily said “No.”
“Why not?” asked the Ladybug and I. I thought pancakes sounded good.
“You can’t take her to breakfast wearing her costume and wings and magic wand. She’ll stick out like a sore thumb.”
“Phooey and poppycock,” I countered.
And so the Ladybug and I went to Perkins without the B to eat pancakes. And while we had a good time, the Queen B was absolutely right: the little girl dressed as a green sparkly fairy did stand out, particularly since all the other kids at Perkins were dressed as soldiers and ninjas and homicidal Jokers.
Poor little freak.
