As children, our costumes were always simple, cobbled together things–gypsy, ghost, hobo, whatever. They were not store bought and more often than not required that we put on lipstick and eye shadoow, which was always a plus back then. We would trek out with our dad and hit the neighborhood with our pillowcases in hand and Unicef boxes around our necks. Every once in a while, some older person would actually say, “Trick” to our “Trick or treat” and then we would stand there dumbly as the person waited for us to perform until the person eventually just took pity on us and gave us our damn candy.

The worst was to get an apple.

AN APPLE?!?!?

No child wants an apple on Halloween. It’s just going to go straight into the trash because no sane mother would let her child eat that razor-blade embedded thing.

And then, we learned that Halloween was for spraying our friends with shaving cream and hitting each other with eggs and for getting our first French kiss behind the post office.

And then it just became the time to go out to bars dressed as a cat or a hooker or a character from Brazil but it didn’t matter which because we were too drunk or stoned or whatever to care.

And then it became now: the time in our lives when we avoid all things costume. Yes, there are still those “adventursome” friends who desperately send out invitations to their Halloween costume “Bash” but they will not find us there. We’ve done our time dressed as one of Charlie’s Angels. We’ve had the guy dressed as Andy Warhol tell us our teased hair was the same exact wig he had on.

Halloween? We are so over it.

So sayeth the curmudgeon.