Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Happy Halloween!

I always loved Halloween as a kid.

Getting dressed up, although it was usually as a hobo or a ghost, running from house to house extorting candy from terrified grownups. Running loose on the streets.

Later it was driving around in some beater car, having egg wars and trying to pick up women.

Then it was adult parties with booze and other stimulants.

Then came taking my own kids out trick-or-treating.

Now, the youngest, my adopted grandson is 15. He is right on the cusp of being too old to put on a costume and go trick-or-treating. When I was growing up, I had little sisters, so I could always go along to keep an eye on them, thereby extending my trick-or-treating years. He did ask me this morning is we had any eggs.

My favorite Halloween story is when my son was seven. I don't remember where I got it, but I had gotten a face make-up kit somewhere. It was very high quality stick-on preosthetics with filler and color and everything. The packaging said "Hollywood Quality".

I didn't believe it for a moment.

But as I applied the cheekpieces and nose pieces, and faired them in with filler and colored them it, the results were amazing. It was hard to believe that my son lurked under that face. They eyes and mouth were familiar, but the rest was unrecognizable.

And kind of unsettling.

We set off. We had hit a couple of houses, and a man and his small child approached from the other direction. Other than the face makup, all N.'s costume consisted of a black robe.

The child, who was about four, took one look at N. and shrieked at the top of his lungs. He was shrieking "I want to go home! I want to go home.!!"

Of course V. found this very entertaining. A lot of people thought he looked.......disturbing. Because it wasn't a mask, and you couldn't tell where the prestheses left off and kid began.
Grownups would look at him and do a double take, and call inside "Come out here you HAVE to see this!"

And they always gave him a little extra candy.

There was enough face putty and double back tape to last two years, so we did the same thing the next year. And although I searched high and low I never could find the same or a similar product again.

If I could, I would get one and use it for myself.

And scare the little candy extorting would be monsters right out of their underoos.

BWAHAHAHAHAH (Evil Laugh)

4 comments:

Stacy The Peanut Queen said...

You're such an evil man...;)

And I would like to hear more about...how did you put it??? The "Then it was adult parties with booze and other stimulants."

Sounds pretty dern interesting! :)

Al said...

PQ: Some of them were more than interresting. A couple of them got downright scary.

rennratt said...

Ooh! Do you have any pictures?

Al said...

Renn: Much to my disappointment, the pictures disappeared. They did exist.

Really.