The bitterest of holidays….

Halloween, the bitterest of holidays.  Halloween is according to many resources the one that we all spend the most money on.   Not sure what the appeal is, maybe wearing a costume makes you feel like another person for a day.  Maybe it is the fact that you can eat candy and be on a sugar high for a month.  Maybe it is …. I don’t know.  What is the deal?

For a month, we decorate our places and have haunted houses, and buy candy.  Then the actual day comes (it couldn’t possibly be on a Friday or Saturday could it?) and what do we do?  Go trick or treating?  I’m old, how am I supposed to go to my neighbors doors and ask for free candy?  And who said that going to peoples houses was okay?  So for 364 days a year stranger is not allowed to come to my house and beg for things but on this one night it is okay?  Why?

Tell me if you have heard this before.  You go to work on Halloween and you wear a costume.  Say it is something that people don’t recognize.  What kind of questions do you get all day long? “So what are you supposed to be?” Yes the guessing game.  People have to guess what you are, or you have to tell them.  You spend all day telling people what you are.  You either get a “Oh, yeah I kind of see it” or “You don’t really look like that thing you just said”.  Then you feel self concious all day because of the stupid thing that you decided to wear.  And now you are committed to wearing it, because you brought no alternative.  Or say you decide to go all 0ut and put some make up on.  Say you just want to eat something, but you have make up getting in your food and on your clothes and in your hair.  Yeah, that sounds like loads of fun.

So you decide to go with the alternative and wear your regular clothes.  You get just as many innane questions as you do if you were wearing a costume.  “So what are you supposed to be?” And here is the most bitter of things for me.  Coming up with a clever response to a question that has been asked over and over again for the last billion years.  “I’m being myself, isn’t that scary?” or “I’m a bitter and lazy guy,”  or “I’m being an employee of this company”.  Since there is no clever answer to this question, it makes me bitter that I have to answer it.  I need to invent a pre recorded stupid response for everyone that asks this question, so I can just go back to doing my job.  Maybe the recorder could come up with a response that is clever, because I am plumb out.

And is there a day that fades quicker into the background that Halloween?  I think there are people that are more excited about November 1st than Halloween because it just means that it is over.  Maybe November 1st should be the holiday where we finally don’t to have to answer stupid questions and we can clean up the and everyone completely forgets about Halloween.  We could have put stuff away celebrations and throw away stuff parties.  And we could talk with all bitterness about Halloween.  It would be a holiday about moving on and getting back to our regularly scheduled bitterness.

Arrrgghhh

Bitter Ben