March 29, 2024

Halloween no longer just for kids

Halloween is no longer for the kids. Sure there’s still Trick-or-Treating and all that jazz, but this holiday has become a national passtime for adults to one up each other in decorations, costumes and parties.

I, for one, support this movement.

As a kid, my Halloween costumes weren’t always the greatest. In fact, most of them were just terrible. We weren’t the most financially secure people when I was growing and even when things were good, my mom was almost as cheap as I am now.

So because of these facts, I was a football player more times than I count (I wore my pee-wee league uniform) for Halloween. I never got to be a Power Ranger, Batman or Raphael from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

I also had to wear one of the worse costumes ever one year — I was the world’s most terrible clown.

Basically, about a dozen of my cousins and I were sitting around waiting to go trick-or-treating at my aunt and uncle’s house. None of us had costumes and they got sick of us running around the house, like children tend to do when cooped up, and decided to take us out to hunt for candy.

The solution to our lack of costumes was to make us all clowns. They covered all of our faces with flour and put red lipstick on us, but we still wore our regular clothes.

Also, instead of Halloween buckets, we all had giant trash bags to carry our candy.

We had fun and got a ton of candy, but the terrible-ness of those “costumes” haunts me and entertains me at the same time. I also went as a bum one year and wore one of my grandpa’s old suits. I actually enjoyed that costume.

With memories like the “clown” suit still vivid, I vowed as an adult to rock Halloween and for the last several years, I have owned Halloween like nobody’s business.

It all started three years ago when I was Tiger Woods right in the midst of his cheating scandal. I posed for an incredible amount of pictures that night and whenever I see that red polo in my closet, I give it the head nod of approval.

Two years ago, I upped the ante and went as Ike Turner (I like infamous people, apparently). This costume led to my now legendary purchase of my gheri curl wig and allowed me to borrow my Uncle Mond’s fur coat. I once again became a walking photo-op.

Last year, “The Crew” (my team of friends back in KC, my Newton-squad is “The Group”) and I got organized and went as crew of ’80s B-Boys. We all had matching Adidas jump suits. Mine was Red, O had blue, Donnell’s was black, and Josh had white, and we were the group costume champions of Kansas City.

We went all the way in. Four-finger rings, beepers, giant gold chains, Kangol hats, activator spray bottles and of course, my legendary gheri curl wig.

This year, I may have topped all of those previous years, by going one decade earlier than I did in 2012. I was the living embodiment of the disco era with my new creation: ’70s Man.

To create ’70s Man, I bought the biggest afro wig the Internet had to offer. I went and found the loudest, most ridiculous butterfly collar shirt there was and got a sweet disco medallion and set of Elvis-style shades.

In addition, I have been growing my incredibly miniscule amount of facial hair out to better fit the part and purchased some stick-on chest hair, which, by the way, doesn’t work if you only have 12 real chest hairs to adhere it to.

Once I put all of this stuff on, I looked in the mirror and it was perfect. So perfect, in fact, I won Raceway’s Halloween costume contest last Friday. But as much as I love winning, I also loved how many photos I posed for and how many people, who had equally impressive costumes, gave me praise for my costume.

However, I am not the type of person to sit around and be content with any win, big or small. I am already plotting for next year and I’m thinking either the original Red Power Ranger is calling me or Jedi Master Mace Windu.

So next year, either the force will be with me or some hardcore morphin’ action is going down. I can’t wait!