November 3, 2014

Holiday Antics Come Naturally to Us

Well another Halloween has come and gone, and with minimal pumpkin smashing and fire starting.  Kudos to those who might be tempted to ruin one of the best nights of the year with those senseless pranks.  

I, as usual, enjoyed a little harmless revelry on that night of nights.  Let's just say that the darling, daring little kiddos trick or treating my house got a little surprise when a lady with pink, flashy hair answered their beckoning door bell.  The way I see it, I was just instilling on their little psyches the important fact that one can never be too old to cut loose and enjoy such an enchanting night as All Hallow's Eve.

October 31 antics have always been a part of my life.  This was instilled upon me and my siblings by our dad, who led the parade when it came to enjoying the holiday.  Drawing from some of the harmless little pranks that he learned as a youngster, Dad taught his willing subjects the finer points of haunting at Halloween.

Sometimes that meant dressing in an oversized men's coat pulled over our head ala the Headless Horseman, and sitting in wait for the unsuspecting candy seekers to enter our domain.  I'm sure more than one fled in terror without even gathering a treat from the door.  Dad also taught us the art of haunting our favorite neighbor's house by rigging an invisible thread to open pull open their door, or running empty wooden thread spools across their window to create  eerie noises.  All of these tricks took days to perfect, which is half the fun when planning a haunt.

Of course there were the costumes and every year we'd either dig through the dress up trunk in search of hobo duds or gypsy garb or ghostly get ups.  One year we devised clever costumes using old white pillow cases on which we drew  exaggerated faces.  These were then placed over the head and when you held up your arms, they presented a garish spectacle.  

A favorite go-to costume of course was the witch, for which we'd always don one of our grandmother's old black dresses and a stiff, plastic mask that was held on by an elastic band around ones head.  Simple, yet very effective, I guarantee that much.

I'll admit that sometimes there was toilet papering involved, but of course that was without dad's consent.  I'm sure he would never condone such antics and mom wouldn't allow for the waste of perfectly good tp.  In fact, there were times when our family was the recipient of the decoration and our mom actually saved some of the better, usable portions of the paper.  Okay, maybe this is just myth but I seem to remember this happening on more than one occasion.

So, my generation comes by the enjoyment of the holiday naturally.  Brother always delves into it wholeheartedly and this year constructed a giant spider in his garage and placed it atop the roof.  I will have to say that just seeing the photographs actually gave me shivers and recollections of the B-movie thrillers where giant arachnids take over the world one house at a time came to mind.  

This year I rigged a battery powered, motion activated ghost on my front porch.  I'm sure it harmlessly entertained the youngsters who visited my front door with it's ghostly howl and movement to and fro.  

But flash forward a few hours later when the lights had gone dark and all were safely tucked into bed.  

Outside my window I heard an otherworldly moaning on my front lawn.  I awoke with a start and despite the warmth of the covers I was under, actually felt a spine shuddering fear.  Could it be......a ghoul outside that was intent on tricking me, the trickster herself?!  

As I lay there I wondered if I'd ever be able to return to my sound slumber.  But just as I was slipping back to sleep another ghastly moan started up......and it was then that I remembered that I hadn't turned off the little ghostly apparition that I had hung on the porch to entertain my trick or treaters earlier that night.

Yes, that's right.  I guess you can say I tricked myself into a good, healthy scare.   And after all these years, I suppose it was high time.