My Halloween traditions aren't nearly as exciting as most people's. My social anxiety and weird phobias act up around this time of year, and I hide inside as much as I can. I don't like strangers coming to my door, and completely unrelated to that, I don't like people in costumes. A lot of people are creeped out by clowns. I am creeped out by those, plus school mascots, Disney park employees, and pretty much anyone who hides their face. I can't stand it. As much as my favorite non-relative little girl was terrified of McGruff the Crime Dog when her mother and I took her trunk-or-treating when she was two, I still never look directly at the artificial faces of costume characters for a similar reason. I tried to smile and laugh when Chip walked up and high-fived me at the end of the Buffalo Stampede last week, but it is not something I would ever seek out myself. I can't point to a childhood memory or any reason for this distrust of masked faces, but it's there and it's real. So Halloween isn't as much fun to me, and I am okay when I have excuses to skip it. This year, I have such an excuse. I'm home alone, I don't have a party to go to tonight, and I have a house full of animals who are better served by not having the doorbell ring every few minutes.
Cats are terrorized by an endless stream of noises and voices coming from the front door. I usually lock them in a bedroom when I know trick-or-treaters will be coming. The dogs don't do so well, either. I'm afraid that if they were left loose, they would jump on kids or bolt through the door and run off. I don't enjoy locking up my animals, so I try to avoid doing it. I decided against buying a bunch of candy to hand out, to avoid having a surplus of corn-syrup-soaked, genetically-modified temptation bombs. I went so far to avoid Halloween as to leave the neighborhood at quarter to five, so I didn't even see anyone wandering around my street in costume. A few people at the grocery store where I stopped on the way home were dressed up, but no one was in a giant head-covering mask, so I handled it well enough.
Which brings me to my preferred Halloween traditions. I like scary movies, alone in the dark. Last night I watched the original Halloween from 1978, and I have the second one on tap for tonight. I would have watched it already, but I couldn't miss Shaun of the Dead while it was on. I performed a little ritual sacrifice on a tiny pumpkin (and made a passable soup, but not anything ground-breaking for another Annie's Test Kitchen report), and I tried to get some cute pictures with my little black cat. She would not cooperate when I tried to pose her with the pumpkin, but she did sit around like a doofus this morning, with a large tuft of her own fur hanging out of her mouth. Very smooth, Athena. Maybe it was a fake beard, for her Halloween costume. Who am I to judge?
No comments:
Post a Comment