Halloween Hodge Podge

Hey, everyone!  And, might I add...

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!

Yes, Halloween is finally here, and I hope that all of you have gotten your last minute preparations completed.  Whether that involves buying more bags of candy, or whether you are finishing up the last minute details of your Halloween costumes, I certainly hope that you have a fantastic time.

Remember kids, always make sure that you wear costumes that can be seen in the dark.  After all, you have to make sure that you are trick-or-treating safely.

You should also check your children's candy as well before they eat it.  After all, you have to make sure that with food allergies and going door-to-door around the neighbourhoods, you make sure that they are eating candy that is considered safe.

But most importantly, try to have fun tonight!  Oh, and when I say fun, I mean that you should do so safely and responsibly.  This means no taking part in tricks that can be considered dangerous.

Now, I did have a post that I intended to write tonight, but due to some technical issues, I am unable to follow through with it.  But luckily, I can think on the spur of the moment, and in this case, I'm going to make this post all about sharing some Halloween memories via photos that I've randomly come across on the Internet.

So, that's likely why I've called this post the Halloween Hodge-Podge.  It's kind of a mishmash of Halloween memories of the past. 

Now, before I share my list, I want to mention two things.  First, I encourage every single one of you reading this to comment or chime in with your own Halloween memories.  After all, this blog is an interactive one, and I do appreciate and welcome all comments.  Go ahead and share your stories.  I love hearing them.

Secondly, I'm not putting this list in any particular order...just listing them as I come across them as I think about my own experiences.  Keep in mind that I have only lived through thirty-three (well, okay, technically it would be thirty-four) Halloweens, so you might have some memories from the 1970s, 1960s, or even earlier than that to share.  Please post those stories too if you like.  It will be interesting to see how much Halloween has changed over the years.

All right.  Here's memory #1.

Oh, how I have such a fond memory of the movie "Beetlejuice".  I have to watch this film at least once every Halloween.  I think the first time that I saw this movie was the year after it was released, which would be 1989.  My sister wanted to throw a Halloween party in our attic (at the time, we lived in a three story home), and she had rented "Beetlejuice" and "Pet Sematary".  Now, as an eight year old, I was not allowed to watch the latter.  However, I fell in love with the "Beetlejuice" movie - which I admit to swiping from the attic to watch in secret.  I honestly don't even know if the party went on, but I always remember watching "Beetlejuice" for the first time on Halloween, 1989.

Next memory.

Ah, a paint set.  You probably may not understand what a paint set would have to do with Halloween, but when we were kids and we used to live in a house that had two front entrances (it was laid out extremely weird), in order to help kids know what entrance to go to, we painted a mural on one of the glass windows of the entrance to direct kids to that entrance.  All of us were really artistic kids, but my sister always did most of the painting.  I only wish that I had some photos of these murals, but we never took pictures of them.  Such a disappointment that we never snapped any shots of them...but then again, this was the late 1980s/early 1990s.  There were no smartphones back then, and cameras were really expensive back then.

Okay.  Next Halloween memory.

I know what you're thinking.  Haven't I confused Halloween with Christmas?  There's absolutely no way that one can link a blizzard to Halloween - well, unless you're one of the ten thousand girls that is planning to dress up like one of the characters from the Disney movie "Frozen".

Well, keep in mind that my trick-or-treating days were long before "Frozen" came out.  My final year of trick-or-treating was 1993, and on October 31 of that year the temperature in Ontario was so cold that we ended up having a really huge snowfall right in the middle of trick-or-treating time.  But you know something?  I didn't care.  I loved it!  No snow was going to stop me from getting my yearly supply of peanut butter cups, Chiclets gum, and Cheetos.  Besides, I wore a really, REALLY warm costume that year.

Yeah, that's where the Coke can comes into play.  The last year I went out trick-or-treating, I dressed up as a can of Coke, fully insulated with warm foam material. 

Or, was it Jughead Jones?  I can't remember now.  But I do distinctly remember dressing up as both.  Come to think of it, I remember dressing up as a lot of pop culture figures of the past.

I was Pepe LePew.

I was Super Mario.

I was Kermit the Frog.

I was the stupid little green sprout from those Green Giant commercials.

I even dressed up as Michaelangelo the Ninja Turtle for two years in a row.

(Man, I seemed to like dressing up as green things when I was a kid.  It's a wonder I didn't dress up as Luigi instead of Mario.)

Let's see.  I have a memory of the year I dressed up as Mario.  It was a rather bittersweet memory at that.

Okay, you have a scavenger hunt list.  This story goes into detail.  The year I went as Super Mario was 1991.  Two days before Halloween that year, I lost my grandmother to a heart attack.  What was really creepy was that my grandmother's wake was on Halloween night.  So, while my family was at the wake, I went trick-or-treating with a friend of the family (my parents insisted that I have fun trick-or-treating before my grandmother's funeral on November 1).  And when my parents picked me up that night and we drove home, two college kids were trying to steal the tackling dummy that we threw in our tree for decoration!

Yeah...that was an interesting Halloween.  I mean, here we were about to bury our relative, and these people were stealing fake corpses from our tree.  What kind of a world do we live in?

So, after they explained the situation and apologized, we let them have the dummy anyway.  All they had to do was ask us!  No need for them to have resorted to body snatching!

Okay, so that's all of the Halloween memories I have.  Any you want to add?