Ghosts of Halloween Past

When I grew up, Halloween was the kick-off to a long awaited holiday season.

We had costume parties at school (when you used to be able to call it a Halloween party complete with witches and bats, instead of a bland Fall Festival complete with scarecrows and hay bales – why were party poopers invented?), small town parades to prance proudly down our eight block Main Street (where every single citizen seemed to show up) and trick-or-treating mania where I’d have to come home halfway through the evening and dump my candy (promptly hiding it all from my dad or it’d be gone by morning) because my pumpkin got so overloaded, it was too heavy for me to carry.

What better way to celebrate Halloween than to dress up as Cookie Monster and pedal your best lookin’ stuffed animals on a parade through town? OK, forget the cute monster on the trike. What about the clowns in the background?

Spectator Sport. Told you the whole town showed up (there’s still time for you to go this year). And let’s discuss my mom’s creativity with the cookie wheels… genius!

Lucky for me most of my life, I’ve always had my sister side kickin’ it as a partner-in-crime. If I was going to be dressing up (sometimes making an ass out of myself in later years) she was going to be doing it too, by God (town parades included).

In the beginning of our twosome, we were all about cutesy costumes.

The Rockstar and Raggedy Ann. There’s my pumpkin I had to come home and unload due to candy mania – all in a town of 1,000 folks.

Cute masked crusaders…but what about the foggy background? Creepy!

As we got a little older, I suppose we wanted to be edgy (or as edgy an elementary kid and toddler could be).

That’s right. We rock. And so does my Fisher Price mobile cassette player. Snazzy carrying strap!

A scarecrow (complete with hay in the overalls – keepin’ it real!) and a mini-old man. Almost scary. Almost.

Then we graduated to truly frightening and fearful territory.

Scary Skeleton (how fitting) and Pebbles (decked out in her Strawberry Shortcake slippers). I’m also starting to wonder if there was any other color of hair paint than green, since that tends to be a trend here.

As we thought we were so grown up our costumes reflected our mature attitudes.

Lady and the Tramp. Or Princess and Sock Hop girl…however you want to look at it.

Only to remind ourselves in following years just how far from adults we were…

This Monster obviously wanted to trick-or-treat more than the Witch. A recycled mask and costume from previous years (getting lazy on us, Mom?). I was probably ‘too old’ and way too cool to show my face.

And being older we’re not so much cute, cuddly creatures…we’re just mostly cocktailed.

The odd couple. Pocahontas and Kid Rock.

Now that we’re miles apart during the costuming time of year, it’s fun to look back at our sisterly ghosts of Halloween past.  You should take a look at the old skeletons in your closet.

You aren’t a fraidy cat, are you?

CBXB

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