With just four days to go before ghosts and goblins inhabit our neighbourhoods, all that’s left to do is head back to the store to repurchase the candy and treats that you’ve been sneaking since your first purchase was made with good intentions weeks ago.
As I write this, I can’t actually tell you where I hid those two boxes of chips and the bag of candy we bought in September, which I guess is one of the benefits of becoming a senior citizen in recent years. In fact, I haven’t even accidentally come across them since my wife made the emphatic plea: “Hide these!”
But a lot can happen in four days. For now, I just hope I can locate them when it matters.
With All Hallow’s Eve falling on a Saturday this year, there’s no doubt that once the last of the trick-or-treaters has visited, many of you will be heading out to a party. At our house, we’ll have our traditional Halloween supper of fried chicken take-out or, as we call it, “spooky bird,” and settle in for the evening, snacking on what remains in our huge bowl of treats.
We don’t do parties or masquerade dances anymore, owing in large part to some ill-considered costume choices that haunt us to this day.
When my wife and I lived in Port Hawkesbury 30 years ago, I recall back-to-back years going to the Halloween masquerade dance at the Mulgrave fire hall, and that neither night went exactly as planned.
The first year, I went with a theme I knew well – bingo. As a bingo caller in Mabou in my teen years, I had firsthand exposure to what was the biggest game in town during the late 70s and early 80s, so it was a natural choice. It wasn’t a bad idea thematically. But I clearly miscalculated when I chose to dress as a female bingo enthusiast.
My first and only trip to the men’s washroom that evening resulted in some unsolicited attention from my male friends, and I spent the rest of the night doing number one “al fresco” in back of the fire hall.
The following year we returned, undaunted, but this time with a much more elaborate costume. Inspired, I suppose, by Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea, my wife and I, along with a friend, decided we’d go with something called “The Old Man and the Sea Monster.”
Our friend spent a whole afternoon harvesting seaweed which she meticulously wove into a large fishing net. The net would be draped over the two of them, while I tried to get this “monster” onto my boat. Well, that was the plan in theory.
The night of the dance, my brother-in-law gave us a lift to the hall in his truck, since it was a wise consideration that if this whole plan went south in any way, we might want to have a drink…or five. But the brother-in-law certainly wasn’t having anything to do with the sea monster messing up his truck, so while I rode shotgun in the cab, my wife and our friend endured the 15-minute drive on the back of the truck. In case I have to remind you, this was late October, when there’s not much warmth that can be derived from damp seaweed.
We certainly turned some heads as we made our way into the hall.
Now this where I did a little research for this column – research that maybe I should have done 30 years ago. Thanks to artificial intelligence I now realize in hindsight the following: “Seaweed gets smellier as it dries out and begins to decompose because heat and trapped moisture cause bacteria to break down organic sulfur compounds, releasing foul-smelling gases like hydrogen sulfide.”
And that was the least of our problems.
It seems that no matter how careful you are weaving seaweed into a net, some of it is not going to stay put. So, as we might have guessed had we given it sufficient forethought, our sojourns onto the dance floor were most unwelcome. Not only did we take up an inordinate share of the dancing area but also began to reek to high heaven. As if that wasn’t enough, the little pieces of seaweed began to drop from our costume, causing more than one dancer to almost lose their balance.
When the judging was completed we somehow managed to take home second prize, topped only by a man dressed as a baby who had a built a playpen around himself.
I suspect the judges might have been employing a careful strategy, because the announcement of our runner-up prize came mere seconds before we were asked to leave, or at least abandon our costume outside. By that point in the evening, we were only too happy to oblige. I remained in costume, but my “monster” returned to their mortal forms for the rest of the evening.
So, with all due apologies to Hemingway, you can understand why we’re staying home Saturday night.
Happy Halloween y’all!