Halloween: Or How I Lost My Self-Respect

Halloween. The miles traversed. The frozen appendages (no Mom, I am not going to wear a hoodie under my costume, because I'm not the Staypuff Marshmellow Man, darn it), the inevitable disproportion of sour, fruity candy to chocolate (if I eat three Krackels for every Starburst, I can balance it), that one neighbor that always gave Mary Janes (but you kept going every year, because there was no way they could still be selling those in normal supermarkets - until you realized that they most have bought the last store out back in 1960 to prepare for just such an emergency), and that other neighbor that always gave a little paper bag full of unidentifiable generic candy (and you always went to that house because it was the only time they came to their door all year, and you wanted to see if they actually had little children trapped in their basement and ate toads).

Halloween. The struggles. The triumphs.

The public humiliation.

I would like to say that one year I was something typical. Like a gypsy (if anyone is willing to corroborate this story, please contact me).

If there was ever a case for introducing a child to popular culture...

This summer I was approached at a wedding by a former neighbor: "Emily Ann! Why I remember when you were just a little tomboy building things in the dirt. And that time you scraped up your face on the bottom of the pool...oh, that looked so awful. And your Halloween costumes! They were always so...imaginative. (That line that they feed you as a child...In a year, no one will even remember that this happened!...Lies).

Imaginative. Yes. 

I was the Lady of Shalott as a ten year old. Try explaining that one to the Grim Reaper and Malibu Barbie.


Medusa. That was a good one...No need to explain away my nerdiness. I had snakes in my hair. It was enough.

The 2 inch, black plastic nails on the other hand, might have been ill-advised. I'm pretty sure my pinky nail has only recently recovered from the effects of the super glue.

(On a side note, ladies, save your bridesmaid dresses because they may be useful for future gargoyle costumes. Mom, do not take this as a negative commentary on your style. I'm sure that shade of green was really stylish in 1978).

A newspaper reporter.

On second thought, that was not Halloween.

Moving on...

Edible things constituted a large part of my costume repertoire.

One year I was a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich. I would like to say that the purple sweatsuit necessary to the business part of the sandwich was purchased for the sake of the costume...

You know, I'm just going go ahead and say that the purple sweatsuit was purchased for the sake of the costume.

Jelly Beans (Clear, plastic trashbag filled with balloons. Very clever. Not recommended fall evening wear).

Grocery bag (technically, a leaf bag filled with empty cereal boxes and egg cartons). In a sad premonition of my future life, the bag ripped from the weight of the groceries. If only I had a little more consideration for the environment I might have been a canvas shopping bag, and I would have avoided this tragedy. But this was pre-Al Gore era, so I was still unconscious of my carbon footprint. As it was I to hold myself together while my best friend carried my candy pillowcase. (I don't want to use this blog as a medium for personal vendettas, but I'm preetttttyyy sure she took advantage of this situation).

A roll of Candy Buttons. The little boy I was with kept trying to eat them. Although the styrofoam probably wouldn't have tasted much different than the candy. Those things tasted like paper. Probably because they actually were about 50% paper that stuck to them when you pulled them off.

Arguably the worst excuse for candy. But at least it was marketed as candy.

Not like those people that gave out pretzels. I always felt a sense of betrayal proportionate to the length of the sidewalk and the time it took for them to come to the door. The worst.

Except for the dentist who lived down the street. He gave out toothbrushes. That was just downright insensitive.

The Golden Fleece of trick-or-treating? Mallo Cups. In the stupor of sugar inebriation, I may have traded three king size candy bars for one of these...and I have no regrets. It was a mythical being that only appeared on October 31st. You didn't see Galahad giving up the Holy Grail for a Snickers Bar.


College brought Halloween to another level.
(Note the use of "another." The jury is still out on whether this level was higher or lower.)

I wasn't going to make the same mistakes I made as a child - no more Tennyson heroines, no obscure female writers, no mythology - I was going to be culturally relevant.

A poor time to reverse the trend. At my tiny, conservative college, where you were just as likely to see the Androgynous Man as you were to see the Invisible Man, I decided I was going to be Juno.

Not the goddess. The pregnant teenager.

"I've never waltzed with a pregnant girl before. It's a little weird. I guess it probably just feels natural to you though."

Should have stuck with mythology.

One year I painstakingly taped cotton balls all over my jeans and carried a spray bottle full of water. When someone would ask what I was, I sprayed them in the face and said "Cloudy with a Chance of Showers." It was surprisingly unpopular.

The time we were Madagascar was the most successful to date. Unfortunately, I had a fever of 102 degrees. So I don't remember much. Except that I was a pretty fly Marty, and A. will never live down being the hippo.

The last story is brought to you by the realization that my dreams of becoming a public official will never transpire. Also, a complete lack of self-respect.

I decided to be the sun.

A costume that involved hair glue, temporary dye, and my favorite colors? What could possibly go wrong?

I'll tell you.

"Hair glue" might sound very permanent and concrete. But what happens when an immoveable object meets an irresistible force (in this case, my hair, which has a exasperating regard for the laws of gravity)? Watch how quickly that immoveable object wilts.

"Don't worry," my bestie reassured me as we tried to prop up my crunchy stalks of hair with rubber bands and prayer. "Once we spray the dye it'll look fine."

Except when that yellow dye encounters my brown hair.

"It looks yellow...really! It's just the weird light in the bathroom!"

I walked out into the common area.

"Em, what's with the green hair?!" Bestie quietly retreated.

For a half hour or so I persisted in pushing the idea that I was the sun, but eventually caved under the strain.

"So...what are you?"

*mental surrender*

"I'm a carrot."

I'm going on a quest for Mallo Cups. I'll be back never.

Recommended Reading (But Literally)

Tim turned toward his bookcase and started pulling volumes out with enthusiasm. Read this. And this. And this. Etc. and so forth.

I just wanted to borrow one. A book called Augustus that he had recommended years before and that I had never read.

As he walked me out I mentioned that as I was borrowing a book from him, it was only fair that he get one from me. By this time we were at my car. Tim looked in the door, saw a stack of books on the passenger seat and grabbed the one on top.

“I’ve always wanted to read this,” he said, picking up The Sun Also Rises. “Is it good?”

What should I say? I kind of liked this guy, I wanted him to think I was intelligent...I mean, I am intelligent...but would telling him I had never read the book ruin the moment? I didn’t have time to think, I couldn’t risk it…

“It’s Hemingway...writing about bullfights.” This, in fact, was true. It was also all I knew about the book. But I said it in such a way that I might as well have said, “Well, duh, of course it’s good. It’s Hemingway writing about bullfights.” Intent to deceive? Perhaps. But with the best intentions.

Then it struck me. I had just given away my only copy of a book that I had never read but sure as heck better have read by the end of the week.

As Tim walked away from the car I pulled out my phone. No time for GPS: I opened my Audible app and downloaded The Sun Also Rises.

Driving home I frantically calculated the time I would have before our next meeting, divided it by the number of pages in Augustus and the number of hours of the book on tape.

Math is not my strong suit. I canned the calculations and hoped for the best.

Then I turned on the book.

A few days later I got an angry Facebook message from Tim’s roommate. “Just finished The Sun Also Rises, and I'm beyond furious with you. I tell both you and Tim that after a very long hiatus, I want to get back into reading...and then the first book I'm given is wonderful up until a last page, heart-crushing ending. At this pace, I'm going to need therapy after the next book.” He attached a very telling video clip that accurately summed up his reaction.

So apparently TSAR had a heart-crushing ending. Great. Hadn’t gotten to that part yet. But I couldn't profess innocence without revealing my deception. I pressed on.

I continued to speed listen - running, driving in the car -  meanwhile inhaling Augustus at every free moment. At times I desperately considered listening to TSAR while reading Augustus. But that would have been a little extreme.

So my deceit was never discovered:

I came on Friday bearing Augustus, and with TSAR Audible credits still rolling on my phone. Tim was in disbelief.

“Gosh, did you really finish that? I haven’t even read the book you lent me yet.”

Well that’s pathetic. Because I did.

To be fair, it nearly killed me. But I had learned a valuable lesson.

--

Until there was Paul. This time I made sure to recommend a book that I had actually read. The only problem was that it was 800 pages long. When he started asking my opinion about certain key parts in the book, I realized that I remembered next to none of it.

So there went my entire spring. Good thing I love Dostoevsky.

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--

My recommendations became much more general after that. I figured, if I just drop an author's name, then I'm not responsible for whichever work they choose to read.

I need to be more judicious with the names I drop. Unfortunately, coupling the words "hilarious" and "Faulkner", or "comedy" and "O'Connor", seems to be taken as misleading by the majority of readers.

Christian, with the best intentions, picked up "A Rose for Emily" because it "made him think of me."

Oh dear. This was not going to end well.

I only hope that after he finished the story about the old woman who sleeps with the corpse of her would-be lover for 40 years it no longer made him think of me.

Needless to say, there were no roses for this Emily after that.

I Don't Want to Talk Small Talk: Continuing Adventures of the Single Life

The blood had hardly returned to my hand after the pressure of his gripping handshake before I knew about his job, his last two relationships, his opinion on child daycare, and his sensitivity to lactose. All of my conversation starters in one fell swoop. Even the last ditch lactose question. But I shouldn't have been worried. He was a walking small-talk generator: he provided and answered all conversation starters. I have never been such a brilliant conversationalist.

He had a wave and a witty comment for every entering guest.

"Do you know that per- "

"I'm here to socialize: it's only a matter of time. Bathroom?" he called out to a lost looking patron without skipping a beat. "Back on the left."

"Have you been - "

"Nope, never been here but any person with a good sense of direction and familiarity with logical bar setup would be able to figure it out."

"How did you know that he -"

"Any guy carrying around an empty beer with a casual look of desperation on his face is clearly looking for the bathroom."

Before I had finished my beer, he had mentioned at least six times to the myriad of his new best friends that he didn't come to events like this for the talks, he was just interested in socializing.

"It must be an off night for you." I finally managed to get in a complete sentence.

My sarcasm fell like a lead balloon. "Yeah, I didn't get a lot of sleep last night so I'm flagging a bit," he sighed.

It was either the best deadpan I've seen or the grossest misuse of the word "flagging."

Then we were onto personalities. "You're an introvert," he declared rather than stated. "I see that you like to sit back and observe."

I took a stand for myself. "Well I would talk if I could get a word in edgewise."


In retrospect, I came out better when I let him small talk to himself.

After alienating the guy who was friends with everybody, or would be by the end of the night, I beat a hasty retreat to the bar. Even granting DC's seeming disregard of how money works in the real world, $7 was a heinous chunk of cash for a Budweiser, but it was a cheap price to pay for escape (although as a starving grad student who counts in Ramen, the loss of 70 packets was still a crushing blow).

I had more success with Mark. We proceeded along typical small talk lines:

"Where are you from?"

"Washington State."

"Where are you from?"

"West Philadelphia, born and raised (always a crowd pleaser)."

 I knew this script like the back of my hand, and with the confidence of a studied actress I started to adlib.

That was my mistake. Stage fright set in, I froze up. Then, in an actor's worst nightmare, I defaulted to script we had already spoken.

"Where are you from?" Abort! Abort! You just asked him that 5 minutes ago! He's from Washington, remember? Washington State - on the West Coast...ask him about the West Coast...

It was like catching a carton of eggs mid-fall from the refrigerator (which my sister did last Sunday, incidentally. I've been trying to work that analogy in ever since, so I can brag on her).

"Where you are from on the West Coast...(good save, talk slowly)...did you learn about the Civil War? (What?!)

And there go the eggs. And the conversation.


So maybe I'm not the smoothest operator when it comes to my own interests...but as a wingman, I put Goose to shame.

At this point, a clean cut guy in an Army sweatshirt walked past my friend and me. She turned to me and lifted her eyebrows, "I have a soft spot for army guys."

Redemption time!

"My friend likes your sweatshirt," I tossed out over my Budweiser.

He turned around and smiled, "Lo siento, no hablo Inglés."

Of course you don't. That's just about what I expected out of the night at this point. 

But I reckoned without the Latin love of American girls. A small matter of a language barrier was not going to stop the Chilean army (or it seemed by the time Carlos had called his compatriots over) from having a conversation with us (and pushing aside all the tables in the bar so we could salsa to the indie folk guitarist's songs).

If I thought small talk in English was a struggle, trying to make myself understood to our South American admirers in a conglomeration of classical Latin and my few Spanish phrases was like getting Apollo 13 back to earth.

I dug back into my college memories for more vestiges of Spanish...empañada, chorizo, nachos con queso, jalapeño (apparently all I did in California was eat)...

Mi casa, su casa? Definitely not appropriate bar chat.

Then I caught sight of my companion's bottle. "Ah, Corona! Quiero cerveza...y tequila! (see, I didn't just eat in college)

"Quieres cerveza y tequila?" Whistles from the army. Then a sly look from Matias, "Me quieres?"

Uhoh. I don't think that means what I think it means. Vincente took my phone and pulled up Google translate:




Umm...no. No, uh...gusta! Me gusta la cerveza y tequila. I don't want beer and tequila, I like beer and tequila. And I definitely don't want you, Matias. 

Of course, traditional small talk couldn't be completely avoided, but it was far from typical.

"Dónde vives?"

"Pennsylvania." They looked quizzical. "Philadelphia." 

"Ahhh! Philadelphia, si, si...Rocky! Rocky!"

Suddenly I was surrounded by Chileans singing Eye of the Tiger.

One of them pulled up a picture of Rocky on his phone. "You know he? He live from you?"

I could hardly order a meal in Spanish: I wasn't going to attempt to explain that Rocky was not an actual person. I just smiled and nodded, and I will have to answer for the fact that there are now soldiers telling their mothers in Chile that they met Rocky's neighbor.

Then Tomas made his move:





I explained that I was muy ocupado. And that I didn't go out with boys who didn't speak my language.

Felipe was the most well intentioned - he would not be deterred by my "muy ocupado" (very likely he couldn't understand it)...accounting for typos, it seemed like he was planning on coming back for me:





 ...Now if only I could find a way to implement Google translate in my conversations with American boys...