The very earliest Halloween I remember was the fall of '74 when we were stationed in Annapolis. I was 4 years old and very enamored with all things Peanuts. Most kids had a teddy bear, but I went to bed hugging a Snoopy. That year when October rolled around, spurred on by the annual rerun of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!, my first costume was of course, Charlie Brown.
Halloween that year fell on a school day, and my kindergarten allowed us to wear our costumes to class. I thought this was a cool idea, but the resilience of youth likely suppressed the unpleasantness. All Gen-Xers remember these costumes - slack drawstring tops and bottoms made of thin, scant, single-ply nylon that didn't breathe and itched. The mask was equally ill fitting, its eye holes weren't well placed, and it smelled funny.
A year later, we moved to the Mississippi Coast, and my Halloween costumes varied over the next few years. I once was a Founding Father, complete with vest, shirt ruffles, and buckled shoes. This was actually a reused costume Mom made for my first grade's class presentation celebrating the '76 Bicentennial. The following year I was a circus ringmaster, again, reusing the outfit from my school's play.
At some point, every boy with a dad in the Seabees went through a phase where he borrowed his dad's field fatigues. My attempts to don Dad's gear lead to a very frumpy looking Sad Sack of a soldier along with a constant threat of tripping from those oversized boots.
I'd dispensed with costumes by the time I'd become part of the Island View Hoodlums, opting instead for causing mischief and mayhem on those nights rather than chasing Mars Bars and Moon Pies.
These days, All Hallows' Eve has lost its luster for me. I'll still go through the annual ritual of picking up bags of full-size Snickers and KitKats because breaking the vicious cycle of candy corn is one of my life's side quests. However, since we don't typically get any ghost or goblin visitors, I become the sole beneficiary of my candy choice largesse.
I wish I could reclaim the wide-eyed, childhood infatuation with the holiday. Donning an alter ego and leveraging free snacks from strangers under the threat of roguish shenanigans was a pleasant way to pass an evening. Perhaps all it takes to regain that old Halloween magic is rewatching the Peanuts gang special. Recapturing that childhood wonder would be delightful—minus the janky costumes, of course.
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