Halloween is scary for a very different reason

Thing just haven’t been the same since I outgrew my Batman underroos.

I used to love Halloween; it was the highlight of my year. I’ve never been satisfied with reality, due to its lack of monsters and treasure-yielding quests.

Halloween was different though. It had monsters aplenty and a quest as simple as traveling a few blocks yielded a bounteous treasure of enough Milky Ways and Dum Dums to last me through the winter.

That’s not to say my childhood Halloweens were perfect. I’d get in trouble like any other kid. I would often forget that all the goblins running around were really my classmates and my hardened “Gauntlet” skills would come back to me and I’d start busting out my Louisville Slugger.

But a few bruises and a concussion aside, Halloween was great fun, at the time.

Looking back, though, Halloween was stupid.

The candy that you got while trick or treating was always a letdown. In the cartoons, kids were getting carameled apples, full-size candy bars and magic wishes.

I never got more than a box with four Milk Duds.

Halloween candy usually falls into one of three catagories:

The fun size, which is totally false advertisement. There is nothing fun about a candy bar so small you can bite into it and miss.

Smarties, which – I know I sound old when I say this, but kids today don’t know how good they have it with their Smarties. Everyone has color. Back when we were kids, you were lucky if you got three colored smarties in your pack. All the rest were those stupid white air-flavored ones.

Candy corn is so gross that I’d hope the next peice of candy I ate contained a razor blade so it would cut the taste buds right off my tounge.

I was always let down by my costumes. I always had brilliant and super-creative custom ideas. They never seemed to work out, though.

For example, I remember one year I was planning on making a full-size, movie-accurate costume of the alien from the classic film “Aliens” made from rubber latex and plaster. I figured out ways to have it spray acid should I get a cut in the suit.

However, I – between a big diorama I had to make for a book report and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles marathon – would up wearing a green sweat suit with Dracula teeth.

So there I’d be, on the door step, already looking like a vicious breed of asparagus, and the adults holding the candy would put me through an embarrassing interrogation with the sole purpose of trying to trick me into admitting that I didn’t deserve anything.

“So what are you suppose to be little boy?” they would ask.

“Aym gruim,” I’d say.

“What?” They would ask.

“I’m green,” I would say spitting the teeth out.

“Huh?”

“I’m green, you know, like the color,” it was about this time I really wish I had the acid. “Look, I know it’s a lame costume but could you hurry it up? I’ve got a lot more humiliation to endure before the night’s over.”

I’d always walk away feeling like there was no way a hard-to-open pack containing two Sweettarts was worth this.

Soon, I outgrew trick-or-treating and I didn’t want to be that kid who gets nothing but candy corn and dirty looks at every door because I was too old (we used to give anyone obviously older than 12 old soy sauce packets from the local Chinese restaurant).

So I started going to Halloween parties. These were way cooler because there were girls there.

Now, I realize that this didn’t matter because I would never talk to those girls anyway.

Halloween parties were supposed to fill the gap left in your heart when you discovered that all the games at your grade-school Halloween carnival were rigged.

Rather than rigged games, they had stupid ones, like bobbing for apples. Who sold us on this idea? Looking back, I feel really stupid about how good I was at this drowning hazard.

Basically, you stick your head – with your mouth open, mind you – into a mixture of 10 percent apple juice, 35 percent washed-off makeup and 55 percent backwash.

These days, all we have is the Howl, during which the only rule I’ve been able to discern is somehow, cleavage equals a costume.

So, basically, I’m looking forward to the day I can crush all my kids’ holiday dreams and tell them the Great Pumpkin died.

Steve Shinney is a junior in computer science and is currently really looking forward to gorging himself on Great Pumpkin pie this Thanksgiving. Comments can be sent to

steveshinney@cc.usu.edu