Realities of Halloween memories masked by nostalgia

November 2, 2009 —

Being that I’m almost old enough to rent a car on my own, I have my share of “Back in my day” anecdotes.

Each October, I’m reminded of one of my most trusted cantankerous nostalgic standbys: Halloween.

For years I’ve insisted that Halloween just isn’t like it was when I was a young scamp roaming the neighborhood and collecting enough candy to ensure abuse of the family dental plan.

In my eyes, the cheap, flimsy costumes of today paled in comparison to the ones we had.

Good Halloween fun had given way to overprotective parents sapping all the enjoyment from the lone day of the year where taking from strangers is encouraged.

But this year, I had a revelation: all of my fuzzy Halloween recollections have masked several key realities.

I may scoff at the popular costumes children wear today. But that probably has more to do with me having no idea who the Happy Tree Friends are and less to do with the cheapness of the costumes.

Let’s face it, pre-made costumes have always been terrible quality. I’m not sure I owned one that made it through the entire night, let alone could be used a second time.

I’ll wager no one my age didn’t have at least one Halloween where they made the trick-or-treat rounds wearing some pre-made abomination that came with a thin mask with the consistency of a plastic plate.

Then there’s my perceived notion of overprotective parents of today watering down the unabashed Halloween antics my peers and I enjoyed as youngsters.

But that memory of all this freedom is a bunch of crap, too. We got the speeches about not taking items such as apples because they might have pins or razor blades in them.

We weren’t free to roam the streets all night.

And while I can’t speak for everyone, I can certainly say I was forced to compromise my already shoddy Hulk Hogan costume by covering most of it with my bulky winter coat.

My cheap mask and costume ordeal was slightly remedied in later years when I made the upgrade to those heavy latex masks.

So instead of hoping the eye slits of the dinky plastic masks didn’t slice out my eyes, I tried my hand at completing my candy grubbing before I suffocated inside a nonbreathable, latex Dracula mask.

Eventually I became so disillusioned with these masks that by the end of my trick-or-treating career I was going as “overweight kid with glasses.” Thankfully, that happened to be a character I was familiar with every day of the year.

This isn’t to say I’ve done a 180 and now have nothing but poor memories of my formative Halloweens.

It’s more of an admission that even though some things have changed for the worse, Halloween for children isn’t one of them.

Trends zip in and out as time passes, but we can always relate to the youths of today with our shared experiences with overpriced costumes and plastic masks that break before the night ends.