MikeyOpp.com

I hate Halloween. And yes, as my boss often reminds me, hate is a strong word. So allow me to repeat myself; I hate Halloween. I hate Halloween so much that until last night, I was dead set on writing a massive missive on my negative feelings towards Halloween. I was all set to rant and rave about how much I hate the ‘holiday,’ and how it’s actually my least favorite holiday. So all week I racked my brain, and it didn’t’ take much effort to come up with a ton of reasons for why I hate Halloween.

But then I got talked into getting a costume this year, and going out to a few Saturday night Halloween parties. Last year was my first Halloween in Portland, a place where most people have so many tattoos and dress so uniquely that they look like they’re wearing a costume every day. But much to my pleasure, I didn’t have to wear a costume, because I had to work. This year, I had the night off, and my friends looked like they were having such a good time making costumes and plans, that I decided to give the damn holiday another chance. So I shaved off all of my facial hair, something I hadn’t done all year, and combined my XXL children’s sized Barry Zito Oakland A’s t-shirt with a baseball glove and a hat, and with a little imagination, and a ridiculously large cup in my crotch, I pretended that I was a pitcher for Halloween. But after one look in the mirror, I felt so stupid that I was ready to call it quits before the evening even began.

But instead of taking off the costume and hiding in my room all night, I came to my senses, and did what any ordinary American does when they feel self-conscious, I began to drink heavily until my nerves went away. By nine p.m., not only was I convinced that it was okay to go out in public looking like a freak, but I actually thought that I looked pretty suave in my costume, and began to swagger like I really was the former Cy Young award winning pitcher, Barry Zito. As the night continued, so did my drinking, and by 10:30, I was having a blast with my friends at a party, and I realized that I was enjoying myself. But I enjoyed the drink too much last night, and by twelve o’clock, things were spinning, and instead of hurling pitches, I felt like hurling something else (Luckily, I didn’t.). I did what any irresponsible asshole does when they drink too much; I left the party without saying goodbye to any of my friends, and rode my bike home, drunk as a skunk. And somehow I managed not to kill myself, and I only fell off my bike, uh, actually, I’m not sure how many times I fell, and I’m not sure if the bruises all along my right side of my body are from one bad fall, or the accumulated wounds from many; I only know that for most of the night, I had a blast, but I woke up with the worst hangover of my life, and I’m choosing to blame Halloween, and not the countless shots of whisky.

The reason that I cannot recall the ride home is because something happened to me last night that has never happened to me before; I got so drunk that I experienced what scientists and D.A.R.E educators call a ‘black out’. I cannot, for the life of me, remember any of the bike-ride after the last party, except for one comical fall from my bike. I remember leaving the party, I remember arriving home with my bike, but no matter how hard I try, I cannot remember anything about the trip home, except for one fall from my bike as I was peddling, get this, too slowly to keep my bike in momentum. Yeah, speed might kill when you’re drunk and driving, but it’s the opposite on a bike, if you get too drunk, you can’t coordinate your own limbs well enough to peddle up momentum, and so you fall over from not speeding. And that’s the only memory I have from the ride home.

I had a great time last night, in my ridiculously drunken state, so I’m not going to advocate a Grinch-esque boycott of Halloween. But I would still like to go on record saying that Halloween is my least favorite of all the holidays. Allow me to explain…

First of all, I hate wearing costumes, and I especially loathe the claustrophobic feeling that I get when wearing a mask. And I don’t like Halloween parties either, because if you show up to one without a costume, you get a lot of sass and sarcasm from all the idiots who are in costume. Halloween is like the inverse of high school; in order to fit in you’re being pressured to look like as much of a freak as possible. Halloween parties also suck because bathroom lines appear at an absurd rate at these parties because people take longer to use the bathroom when they have to remove a costume and then put it back on. It’s a common fact that at all Halloween or costume themed parties, the bathroom also becomes everyone’s personal dressing room, and people take far too much time in these converted dressing rooms, wasting time and energy adjusting their makeup or some other inane aspect of their costume, as if anyone who is drinking at a party really cares about any one else’s costume’s status, or its attention to detail.

Halloween is a holiday that encourages fear, feeling afraid, and getting tricked by others. What idiot invented a holiday in which anyone can carry a weapon in public, and the more realistic it looks, the “cooler” the costume? It doesn’t bode well in certain urban areas of our country, a few of which I’ve lived in, to introduce a holiday that justifies wearing a ski mask and carrying a weapon in public, under the ruse of a ‘costume.’ After all, 364 days of the year, we’re programmed to run like hell if we see someone holding a gun or wearing a ski mask, especially at night, and all of a sudden I’m expected to magically shrug off this intuitive self defense mechanism for one night?

In a further attempt to bemoan Halloween, I first have to try and relate to you just how bad I am, on ordinary days, at recognizing people. On a regular basis, I will walk past really good friends on the street without making eye contact or saying hi, because I’m visually oblivious to my surroundings. I could probably walk by my own mother and not even notice her. When I walk around, I’m in my own private world, population me. Now imagine suffering from this lack of aestheticism and then going out on Halloween. It’s a nightmare, I tell you! Not only do I not recognize anyone, but I’m so wary of not being able to recognize people that I tend to clam up at parties and keep to myself. One year, during my first Halloween in Ithaca, I didn’t even recognize my own co-worker as I stood next to her and silently smoked an entire cigarette, the whole while ignoring her. She was mildly put off, and thought I was pissed off at her for some reason, but I wasn’t; I just thought she was a complete stranger, because I didn’t recognize her in her costume.

I hate the whole ‘trick or treat’ aspect of Halloween. I think it’s really stupid to teach young children to knock on strangers’ doors, then to expect strangers to give them delicious candy, and to let them know that if said stranger does not give them candy, it’s okay to ‘trick them’ which somehow translates into egging their car or house, and/or throwing toilet paper into their trees. Eggs ruin house paint, which can be very expensive to re-apply, and toilet papering a tree is so environmentally offensive that it angers me to no end. I’m not all European, and suggesting that we switch to using bidets, but you have to admit that toilet paper, as an invention, is a pretty hefty slap in mother nature’s face. After all, toilet paper is the result of killing a tree, and then using it’s dead mass to wipe away your own byproduct. But toilet paper is a ‘useful’ evil, (but not necessary, mind you), so I use it and don’t think twice. But killing a tree, turning it into paper, and then throwing it all over a living tree for revenge is wrong. Would you throw ground beef into a herd of cattle to get back at the rancher? Children should ask “trick or deforestation?”

Even as a child I remember hating Halloween. As a kid, Halloween always marked the changing of the clocks, the time of year when it suddenly gets dark an hour earlier, for no apparent reason (Later on in life I was informed that day lights savings time was invented to help farmers tend their crops in the early morning, by ‘saving’ them an extra hour of daylight.). I love daylight, but I also love to eat food that’s grown on farms, so I’m okay with farmers stealing a precious hour of daylight from me six months a year, in order to keep me well fed. But as a child, I associated Halloween with the beginning of a six-month thieving of my precious sunlight and its celestial seratonin. Darkness doesn’t ruin me, but it’s a depressant for sure. So I’ve long associated Halloween with a celebration of darkness and the depression that it brings, and the only people who should be celebrating depression are the original shareholders of the company that makes Prozac.

But I have to be fair. Outside of my love for the Oakland Athletics, I don’t have a whole lot of spirit in me. So it’s a natural consequence of this enthusiasm deficiency of mine to dislike a holiday that pressures me to try and draw attention to myself with a costume. But costumes also suck because they do not adapt well to changes in temperature. Back East, it’s usually very cold outside on Halloween, and so if your costume does not involve a winter coat, then you freeze when you’re outside (because regulation 106.342 from the official rulebook on Halloween says that you have no spirit if you wear a regular coat over your costume, even if it’s freezing). But if you’re attending a party, then the opposite is true; it’s usually pretty hot at a house party, so you want a light costume, so that you don’t sweat and bake all night in the damn thing. My point is that if you’re like me, and you normally dress for weather variations, then on Halloween you just can’t win.

And this comes around full circle to another thing I hate about Halloween – the fact that people abide by some strange set of rules for proper and improper Halloween conduct – and none of it makes any sense to me! Take for instance the following ‘Halloween Rule:’ Once your costume is on; you have to wear the thing all night, and you can’t alter or adjust it in anyway. Who came up with this? How often do you go out and think to yourself, no matter how hot or cold I am tonight, I’m not going to change my outfit at all to adjust to the weather. Only an idiot thinks like that, and that means that every Halloween, also known as once a year, most people think like an idiot. I thought that between New Years, the Fourth of July, and the Super Bowl, Americans had enough days of the year in which society encourages and accepts idiocy. Do we really need four days?

So I’ve fought back against Halloween by wearing the same thing for most Halloweens; for several years I have dressed up like Kurt Cobain or cut out eyeholes in a sheet and gone as a ghost. In 1996, I tried to be enthusiastic, and I drew a fake mustache on my face, wore a green hooded sweatshirt, and threw on a pair of sunglasses and went as the Unabomber. I was having a good time until several parents gave me sour looks, and one even told me that my costume was ‘inappropriate.’ Inappropriate? You want to talk about inappropriate, how about the fact that a lot of young girls literally dress up like whores, strippers and sadomasochists on Halloween, and then go out and drink heavily around drunk men who are dressed as felons, thugs, chainsaw rapists and priests? I think my friend Dave was right when he stated that a lot of girls use Halloween as an excuse to dress like the girls they usually make fun of, because they secretly want to dress like a slut everyday. I think the exact same logic applies to Las Vegas, where most people dress and act like it’s Halloween every day of the year. Only on Halloween and in Vegas do you get to see all sorts of sexy, scantily clad nurses, lawyers, catholic school girls, and teachers – to the point of sensory overload. It’s also only on Halloween and in Vegas that you’re encouraged to eat and drink to excess, and where it’s acceptable and even sometimes expected to lie about your identity when talking to members of the opposite sex. The only real difference between Halloween and Las Vegas is that gambling is not legal on Halloween, and since that’s the only thing I really appreciate about Vegas, I feel justified in saying one more time, that I hate Halloween.