Her Cocktail – Jennifer Calhoun
Fun sized candy is getting unnecessarily expensive, business majors are talking about being nurses for a weekend, people are raiding Good Will for cheap and absurd outfits and AMC is airing “Fear Fest.” It all means one thing: The worst of the 365 days of the year is upon us.
Halloween is by far the worst holiday, and may even be singly the worst day of the year. Now, before you call me a hater of all things fun, I’m going to tell you that I have a reason. Ever since I was 4 or 5 years old, I have had a severe fear of masks.
I locked myself in a bathroom for hours one Halloween because I thought my older brother was going out in his gorilla mask. Turns out he was actually dressed as a woman, but that’s beside the point.
Halloween ended for me at a very young age, with a man in a “Scream” mask and poor little 4-year-old me running all the way home in tears. Since that day, Halloween for me has been buying the candy a few days later, when it’s on sale, and never having to leave my house on this dreaded day. This was my childhood … I hope you’re all jealous, because it rocked.
It also grinds my gears that I can’t watch “The Walking Dead” in peace without having to see commercials for “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” “Friday the Thirteenth” and “Halloween.” I just wanted to watch my horribly grotesque show about zombies without all these scary commercials. Is that honestly too much to ask for?
ABC Family’s 13 Nights of Halloween is much more my speed. “Hocus Pocus”? I can do that. “Halloweentown”? Sign me up. “Scooby Doo”? Oh, I’ll be there. “Friday the 13th”? Get that s**t away from me.
There is nothing fun about Halloween. I can buy the candy myself, and actually get the kinds I want.
I don’t like talking to people in real life, never mind going up to their door and begging them for candy.
I certainly don’t like dressing up, and if you’re my friend and you dress up in a mask for your costume, there’s a great chance we aren’t friends anymore. (Just ask my roommate, who put a Jabbawockeez mask on at a townhouse and came really close to having me reflexively punch her in the face).
Give me Christmas any day. Halloween can go.
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Her Beer – Shauna Mitchell
No one has ever asked me why I like Halloween before. Honestly, I thought it was a given: Who doesn’t love dressing up as a favorite pop star/movie villain/other thing people dress up as and binging on Snickers? The tradition was awesome as a kid, and it’s even more awesome now that we’re in college.
There’s a sense of camaraderie between people when they dress up in costume. Do you guys remember the year “The Dark Knight” came out and everyone and their mother dressed up as Heath Ledger’s Joker? Of course you do, don’t even pretend you didn’t love it. And how about the sense of satisfaction you get when you have the most clever, well put-together costume out of all your friends? The pride, man. The pride is like nothing else.
Speaking of pride, it seems everyone at this school is addicted to pumpkins, from their pumpkin pie to their pumpkin spice lattes. Well guess what: Halloween is all about pumpkins. For Halloween you get to pick out a pumpkin that you will later cut open, gut out and carve a picture into. This year, one of my friends carved John Lennon’s face into her pumpkin. That’s right, his face.
But those aren’t even the best parts of Halloween. Don’t pretend you didn’t love running around door-to-door as a child, slowly becoming a fiend for anything with sugar. We all got pretty good at figuring out which of our neighbors bought the good candy, which ones gave out apples and quarters and which ones just left out a bowl (the motherlode) with a sign that read, “Please take one.”
Last, and most importantly, you have the scaring. Nothing thrills me more than walking through haunted houses, having zombies jump out and scream at me or chase me with bloody axes. We don’t say “trick or treat” for nothing, after all. So make sure you dress up tomorrow, and happy haunting.
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