Last night was Halloween. What a trip. For the first time in my adult life I’m actually living in a normal house in a normal neighborhood surrounded by seemingly normal people. So I was thrilled with the idea, for the first time in my life, of having actual trick-or-treaters knocking on my door. So I bought several big bags of Snickers candy bars to prepare for the big occasion. I turned all the lights in my house on, and opened up all the shades to let everyone in the neighborhood know I was open for business.Mostly for the last two months since moving inside I’ve been holed up alone in my house, hiding from the world. Almost nobody in the neighborhood even knows I’m here. I spend most of my time shunted off in my bedroom in the back behind shaded windows, mostly just reading books by myself, getting drunk, and blabbing off to my Facebook friends every night. But tonight is my once-in-a-lifetime chance to actually experience a normal Halloween with kids in costumes and candy and all that.
Halloween was one of my favorite holidays as a kid, roving all over town for hours with my pals until we had so much candy in our sacks we could barely carry the things (no exaggeration). And one of my favorite memories is dumping all the loot all over my bed and organizing the candy in different groups. Chocolate bars there. Hard candy over there. Accursed apples over there. I even remember some of my costumes. One year my mom hand-sewed me a really cool Batman uniform. Another year I dressed up as a woman with a bleached blonde mop for hair (what can I say, I had issues). Another year I dressed up as a bum. Which turned out to be good training for my future.
So anyways, last night I’m all excited about Halloween and pacing back and forth in my living room. Finally around 6 o’clock I get a knock on my door. I open the door and it’s two young mothers with a young boy dressed like Spiderman and a little girl dressed like an angel. Just adorable! I gave them big hand fulls of Snickers. Then, after they left I turned all the lights out and pretended nobody was home for the rest of the evening. It freaked me out. I’m just not used to this normal stuff. I’m used to living in neighborhoods where if somebody knocks on your door at night you double-bolt the front door and look for a weapon.
I guess its gonna take me awhile to adjust to all this normal Mr Rogers Neighborhood kind of stuff. What the hell. At least I had a bunch of Snickers candy bars left over for myself.