Scary

I'd like to wear a costume, but as usual, no place to share it. So, harummphf. Did put up this figure for the balcony. Never hang yourself in a public place near Halloween, people will just think you are a decoration. Why do I find this idea so deep, dark funny? (Another incident this year, too.)


Years ago, working at the Library. Early, took the staff elevator, to a non-public area, and as the door opened, a body lay face down on the floor. A breath-space of deep panic at the corpse, until my rational mind sent in word that it was a dummy, it was Halloween, bring down the adrenaline levels. Laughed in panicked relief. Not even hands or feet, just clothes stuffed, can't remember what the head was, if any. My favorite Halloween prank, no idea who did it. Still want to do it at work, one year. Oh, yes. Maybe next year, it'll be a Tuesday, perfect.



Unlike my young self, I have few real fears. I'm more annoyed by the challenges of aging, the degradation of my strength. How much I look like my mother, aunts and older female cousins. Still, not so bad. At least I didn't get in line for the alopecia gene. Which is about as bad as it gets among my close relations*. Not much to fear there, really.

Never a fan of horror movies, although the music scared me as a kid. (Oooo, that theremin!) Eyes and skulls freaked me out, but not anymore. I've held patients while a surgeon numbed up the eye, and it turned out not to bother me at all. Horror movies got nothing on my regular job. Movie blood doesn't act like the real thing at all, destroying the illusion. The Last Wave is the one film that could no doubt still give me the heebie jeebies, and that's all suggestion and shadows. Scary movies, are, for me, not scary at all. Annoying, silly, occasionally startling, but no longer nightmare fuel. The gore is just gross, the violence just revolting, none of it touching on my fears.



Clouds roiling in, the air still mild. We took a short walk. Out to dinner later with D's brother and parents, they didn't want to be home for the trick-or-treaters this year.

A custom long dying out. I still remember my Casper the Friendly Ghost costume, I was probably 3 or 4, old enough to pick it out, and more or less understand. Went to just a few houses in my aunt's neighborhood, then stopped at her house for the evening. I'm sure I wore it the next year as well, and the body of the costume as a nightgown for a very long time. In my neighborhood, fewer and fewer houses, and children, each year. Parties took over, and much later, school events. I feel a bit sorry that young children no longer get one night a year to run amok in the dark.




*One aunt died of breast cancer, but I always assumed it was due to the nasty chemicals she was exposed to as a beautician from the 1930s onward. A hazard that continues. (I find it horrible that these products aren't properly regulated, or banned. Talk about scary.)