Growing down: the effect Halloween has on us
We 20-somethings are such an odd group.
It seems like we spend so much time figuring out what it means to be an adult. It often comes to the point where we have to literally ask others if we’re doing it right. We devote all this time and energy to getting a job, pushing through obnoxious general classes to get a degree and maybe a slightly better job, all the while generally feeling like children who outgrew high school and now have to play the part of productive members of society.
Eleven months out of the year, we college students do this dance. We pursue passions, learn professionalism and in many ways grow significantly more boring. We travel to our hometowns every so often, and our parents’ friends ask us what we’re up to these days, and we reply “Oh, I’m just in school, working my part-time job and nursing a minor peanut M&M addiction.”
What we don’t dare bring up is the fact that at the end of this particular month, we’re planning on reverting back to our 11-year-old selves and treating Halloween like it’s a weekend-long adult recess. It isn’t shameless, either — we know it’s stupid, and we haven’t yet reached the point where we don’t care.
Halloween, a once-innocent child’s holiday we’ve successfully converted into the St. Patrick’s day of fall — for better or worse — is coming up. I sort of doubt you brought it up with your loving grandparents this past weekend while you were on break.
When they undoubtedly asked you how school was going, did you even consider answering “Yeah classes are going great, and also I dropped $100 bucks on this flight suit at Halloween Express last week so my roommate and I can go to the Howl as Maverick and Goose.”
It’s hilarious that we even try to act like it’s still a cutesy holiday, one that’s been slightly altered by us college kids to represent our more mature, refined taste. Let’s be honest with ourselves for a minute — Halloween is popular because it’s New Year’s with a looser dress code and less acute recollection of our past year’s disappointments.
I’m not going to sit here at my laptop and rattle off a discourse on the questionable morality of the holiday, or if we should even bother calling it a holiday. I just think we should stop treating it like it’s a secret.
It’s 2015 now — our baseball players are all on steroids and in a few weeks our peers are dressing up as Pokemon because weird cultural rules say that’s an okay thing to do. The secret’s out. Let’s just accept that and not pretend like it’s not about to happen. The people you see on the Aggie shuttle on Monday morning are going to be in the fieldhouse the night of Howl dressed like what they think people looked like in the 80’s and losing their collective minds to a Flo Rida song, only to return to normal the following Monday.
Sure it doesn’t make sense, but nothing about Halloween really does. I mean, going door-to-door looking for free candy as an adorable Elsa from Frozen doesn’t make any more sense than the dude from creative arts wearing a ladies’ hot cop costume. The best thing we can do is acknowledge that this is super weird and that nothing is going to stop it from being a tradition anyway.
Halloween can be fun, but enough of this “guilty pleasure” feeling surrounding the whole day. Be shameless about it. Own that batgirl costume. Do it 100 percent. Post photos on Instagram or whatever it is you do, just leave off the fake comments about how embarrassed you are — we all know that’s not true.
— Logan Jones a junior majoring in journalism. He’s enjoyed hearing the various reactions to last week’s Netflix and Chill column, so to keep that train rolling you can email him feedback at logantjones@aggiemail.usu.edu or on Twitter @Logantj.