My Halloweens Were Sometimes Like Rob Zombie's*

PART ONE

As everyone knows or doesn't know, Halloween is my favorite day out of the year. I love everything about it - the costumes, the candy (well, most of it), the decorations, the music, the horror movies, the slight chill in the air (unless Mother Nature NC decides to shit all over my Halloween experience and makes it too warm), the piles of Jack O'Lantern pumpkins they sell out front of that church on College Road. I smile all day long on Halloween, even if I don't have plans and end up just lying on the couch (see: last two years).

The only thing that could make Halloween better is if they found a way to combine it with Christmas (walking around the Wall-Mark today, I see that the Wal-Mart scientific wizards are attempting this very thing, at least as far as intermingling decorations on store shelves goes). Can you imagine how cool a vampire or werewolf or zombie Santa would be? I could imagine that. I'm imagining that right now.

"Be sure and leave a plate of brains and intestines by the fireplace for Santa, Tommy. You don't want him coming into your room when you're asleep and he's hungry."

Anyway, this month is pretty much going to be Halloween Month here at TBIFOW. I'll be remembering some past Halloween experiences, both good and bad, and talking about other Halloween-related stuff. Hopefully people will post in the comments and share their own Halloween stories as this goes along, because I like reading that stuff.

So, I'll start at the beginning, my earliest Halloween memory, which just happens to be the worst costume I ever wore:

"Hello, I'm Kevin. I'm a human being with the poorly-proportioned head of a shark, and a picture of myself about to eat a naked girl on my shirt. Although I have eyes on the sides of my face, I actually see through two holes in my mouth. I can survive out of water, but not without candy, so make with the trick or treat bucket and let's rock."

Yeah, I was Jaws. If you haven't guessed by now, I am sort of fixated on that movie. Regardless of the fact that the movie f*cked my shit up all Summer long, and freaked me right the hell out in front of a bunch of elderly black fishermen, I wanted that costume. I think I may have been disappointed that there was no little Quint hanging out of the mouth of the mask when I got it.

The ebay listing I found one of the above pictures on (I bid on it, by the way, but I wasn't going to pay more than $20 for it and it's already at $21) states that it was produced in 1975, so I would have been six. A six year old shark cruising for candy in the neighborhood ocean of Myrtle Grove Road.

I remember two things about that mask. See those eyeholes? Well, they were sharp around the edges. In fact, the whole mask was nothing but sharp edges. I think the Collegeville Costume people were a bunch of sadists who secretly wanted to disfigure the children of America, because I cut myself a couple of times on that mask. Basically, the shark kept biting my face. My Mom wanted me to stop wearing it, but I pitched a fit over how stupid the costume would look without the mask, so she took some tape or something and softened up the edges around the eyeholes.

The second thing that I remember is that it was hot. No breathing holes that I can recall, and if there were they weren't providing adequate ventilation, so five minutes with that thing over your mug and you were a sweaty mess with a muffled out-of-breath voice.

I wore it two places. Trick or treating, of course, where just about everyone made variations on the following comment to my Mom:

"Children shouldn't wear things like that. That's too adult for a child. Why didn't you dress him up as a ghost or Frankenstein or something nice?"

There were a bunch of busybody old people in the neighborhood back then. I didn't care, because I still got the candy, and I don't think my Mom cared much either because it was none of their f*cking business what she dressed me up as. Did I ever tell you how much I love my Mom? Well, a lot.

The other place I wore it led to my second public freak-out of 1975.

There was a "Haunted House" at the elementary school that year, and my Mom took me there. That's something going the way of the Dodo at schools, right along with Christmas celebrations. Nice job raising your kids to all be as bland and generic and inoffensive as possible, America. The "Haunted House" was the auditorium stage area dressed up with curtains and cobwebs and blacklights and fake smoke and spaghetti guts and peeled grape eyeballs in bowls and older kids dressed up as monsters. We were waiting in line, me with the Jaws mask resting on top of my head (I had given up on never taking it off after smelling my own hot breath reflected back at me all evening), and I noticed a kid wearing a Flash (DC comic book superhero whose power is running at the speed of light, for those normal human beings out there) costume, homemade. It was awesome, a head-to-toe outfit his Mom had sewn for him. I was still debating whether or not Jaws could eat the Flash when we went inside.

I was okay through most of it, put my mask back on, imaginary shark fin on my back breaking through the water, hunting swimmers, and then some kid dressed as a vampire folded his cape over me and scratched the back of my neck with a pin or something, and I nearly sh!t myself.

I couldn't stop screaming. I don't know why, I guess the combination of my imagination and the shark mask and not paying attention to what was going on all combined to catch me at the right moment and I let rip. A shrieking shark. After a few seconds my Mom lifted up my mask and clamped a hand over my mouth, then led me quickly through the rest of the tour, and the second I got outside I was fine. The kid playing the vampire came out and apologized to my Mom, but she told him not to worry about it. She asked me what made me carry on like that, but I had no explanation. I wasn't even really that scared during the whole thing - I just couldn't stop screaming once I'd started.

Yeah, Jaws and me flipping out seem to go together like Peanut Butter and Jelly. Or Pam Beesly and Jim.

*they sucked. Boy, did Rob Zombie ever not get what made Halloween cool.