Not a Fan of Halloween....

My neighbors have a huge inflated jack o'lantern in their front yard, one of those that stands up as long as the air is blowing in to it, but looks like an orange discarded hankie on their front lawn when I take the dog out in the morning. When Missy encountered it, we almost had to take her to a kitty psychologist. She is terrified by much smaller things than huge inflated jack o-lanterns.

Two houses on my way to school that are right across from each other have their front porches decorated with strings of Halloween lights.

Another neighbor has a veritable plastic pumpkin garden in her front yard, along with assorted other decorations. The trees with Halloween decorations hanging in them really creep me out.

I don't know why I just don't care for Halloween. I hate it when the students come to school in costume, and I hate it more when the adults join in the "fun." Don't get me wrong....I'm all about fun, and I have been known to participate in the costume business. I just don't LIKE it. For one thing, I'm not very good at it. When we were young and lived in the trailer park, we usually couldn't afford store-bought costumes. So we went as ghosts. With no eye holes, because Mom would never deface a perfectly good sheet. I made that part up, but don't you just love the mental image of us staggering around a trailer park with grocery bags, blind because we didn't have eye holes? If we didn't go as ghosts, we went as hobos. That's easy. Just put on your raggedy "play clothes" that you were supposed to change into when you got home from school. And smear some dirt on your face. So my creativity never extended to Halloween costumes. I'm still crippled by it.

I hate it when Halloween falls on a school day. First of all, the students don't understand why they don't get THAT holiday off from school. These are high school kids, mind you. Halloween just gives them an excuse to be stupider than normal, all in the name of "fun." And I always hear about them going trick-or-treating. They are 17- and 18-year-olds, fercryingoutloud. Then there are the ones that use Halloween as an excuse just to go out and be mean, wreaking havoc and destroying property. Fun. Huh. This year Halloween falls not only on a school day, but a Friday. Good lord.

Wait............that's the day before the Georgia-Florida game. I won't be there! Yippee!!!!

I don't hate Halloween because I think it's a pagan celebration or because I think it breeds evil in otherwise sensible teenagers (the evil is already there, trust me) or because I think it is anti-Christian or any of that. I just can't get my mind around the concept of putting on a costume (or not) and going around begging for candy that they don't need.

Those of you with little kids, I know it's different for you. I did the Halloween thing when Sweet Girl was young. We lived waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out in the boonies on a dirt road, so I would drive to the most affluent neighborhood in our county and let her trick-or-treat there. It was the safest thing to do. If we had to depend on our own closest "neighbors," she would have come back with a six-pack of PBR and a tin of Skoal.

Then there's that whole Charlie Brown thing. You know the one, where they all go trick-or-treating and Charlie Brown always gets a rock? What's up with THAT? You know all the kids are out trick-or-treating, so it's GROWN-UPS putting rocks in Charlie Brown's trick-or-treat bag. Those bastards.