Lazy Halloween Hermit

So, yesterday was Halloween, as you may have heard. I dressed up as a suburban hermit with an elaborate costume consisting of jeans and a sweater. My intent was to spend the day doing absolutely nothing except lounging around watching Law & Order reruns until the sun set. As soon as the kids started coming around, I would simply retreat to my rented bedroom and fully enact the hermit theme-- ignoring all trick-or-treaters. It's not that I'm mean, I'm just tired. Not physically tired (although sometimes that most definitely is the case), but just tired of the continuous interacting with strangers. Plus, the only candy I had was a treasured half-eaten bag of Hershey Hugs. Well my plan was thwarted around 6:40 pm with the startling ding-donging of the door way. Feeling very trapped I ducked into the kitchen and squatted on the floor hoping the little Lady Bug, Scarecrow and Lion would disappear. DING-DONG! DING-DONG! They eventually gave up on the hopes of receiving any treats from the hermit house. And as promised the returned the lack of treat with a trick. Their excited parents beckoned more kids over for a photo op in front of the door. So there I sat hunched and rocking on the kitchen floor like a frightened autistic child while the children were arranged and rearranged for the perfect Facebook uploads. Eventually their empty pumpkin buckets reminded them to move along and the chatter outside the door faded away. I quickly turned off the lights and TV and sneaked off to my little hermit cave.

Halloween has always been a bit of a mysterious holiday to me. I've never once gone trick-or-treating. My parents were religiously (literally) against the celebration of the devil's holiday and so no overflowing bags of candy for us. Occasionally we'd go to a dress-up "Harvest Party" at our old church but trust me, this was not the same. We lived so far off the main road that we only had one trick-or-treater my entire childhood. And it was our next door neighbor. A cute black batman who arrived on horseback requesting a treat from his unprepared woodsy neighbors. We all came to the door, "COOL!" I think we rummaged up a homemade candied popcorn ball. That was the first and last time a real trick-or-treater came to our door.

I suppose when I have kids, I'll take them trick-or-treating and live vicariously through them. And maybe next year I'll even get some candy and participate in society. Or maybe I'll be in the hospital dressed up as an intern.