You can tell it’s Halloween when the tasteless costumes and pounds of candy hit the shelves. I’m not a big fan of Halloween. Most of the reasons have nothing to do with the holiday itself. Halloween is when the weather turns cold and is a harbinger of the end of Daylight Savings Time. Neither of which I look forward to. As for the holiday itself, I’m not big on the costumes or that there’s another adult drinking party which wreaks havocs on the road. Adults have usurped Halloween. Traditionally it’s a kids’ holiday and I think it should have remained that way. Not that I begrudge adults having parties or dressing up in costumes. Not at all. Too each his own and all that. But the focus has shifted from the kids to the adults and I think that’s a little sad.

As a kid, Halloween was the best. It rivaled even Christmas on the holiday scale. Of course that was helped by my parents being very enthusiastic Halloween revelers. We had a lot of great parties but nothing topped the Halloween festivities. It started at school. The elementary school that I attended held a huge carnival every Halloween. The teachers would do up a hallway of classrooms as the haunted house. The PTA would put together all the other activities. There was face painting, games, costume contests and food of all types. Kids and parents of all age types in the neighborhood would show up to support the school and enjoy the fun. Then on Halloween was the party at the home. Technically it was billed as a Girl Scout party, but that was just the excuse needed. There were three of us kids and my brother was definitely not a Girl Scout and yet his friends and classmates were included. More games, crazy amounts of food and a haunted house that encompassed the entire backyard and outside buildings and the trick or treating. That was the best part. Hordes of kids begging for candy from all the neighbors.

But that was before. Before razor blades in the apples and candy laced with drugs or poisons. I think that’s when Halloween started to morph into a more adult holiday. And who can argue with the reasoning? It’s no longer safe for kids to trick or treat and randomly eat the goodies they collect. But like many other things (the internet), people had to turn something fun and light hearted into something less than. And it’s a shame because some of my best childhood memories are from Halloween.

The other half of Halloween revolves around ghosts, goblins and witches. Scary stories and movies that are guaranteed to mess with our heads and get the adrenaline pumping. As a species, we love scaring ourselves silly. I’m no different. I love a good ghost story or scary movie. And I’m not talking about slasher films where the people are killed in every scene. No, I’m talking about the stories that leave it to your imagination by planting a seed. A seed that not all that is around us is as it seems. Our minds take it from there and we imagine goblins in the shadows. Adrenaline starts to flow and the blood starts pumping and it’s addictive.

One evening I had the house to myself, it was late and I couldn’t sleep so I decided to check out “The Typewriter” on Netflix. I had heard good things about it and thought that a late Friday night was the best time to watch a movie based on an Indian ghost story. And it was great. Story was smart and well written and the actors really brought it to life. And yes it was creepy, but I didn’t think too much about it. Then I went to take a shower before going to bed and that’s when things went sidewise. When I went to leave the bathroom, I realized I had locked the door. Not a regular practice but then it would have been easy to do without thinking. No big deal, right? But I stepped in to the hall and realized that my bedroom door was closed. I didn’t remember closing it and the door generally stays open until bedtime. And while I didn’t think anyone was in the house, I sufficiently freaked myself to go get the dog and make her enter the room first. (If you knew what a wuss my dog is, you’d know how ridiculous that sounds.) I then turned on all the lights to banish the ghosts hiding in the shadows. Laughed myself silly and thought the show was even better then I originally thought. Spooked me without my even realizing it!

While Halloween may not be my favorite (Have I mentioned I don’t like the color orange?), I do hope that everyone who does like the holiday has fun and enjoys the day. I think I might stay in and find another good ghost story.

A funny thing happened…

Last week at work I was putting some shelving together which was only slightly successful. Everyone has extra parts, right? Okay, so I had more than extra parts. I had an extra shelf. Somehow my 6-tier shelving rack only had 5 shelves. I laughed and determined that I would fix it later. I think I should point that I did have help. However I’m not naming any names as this person is young and doesn’t need the stigma. The next night I was working late on a software issue and while I was waiting for the software to do its thing, I thought I would try and fix the shelf. Better than just sitting around, right? Maybe not. The top shelf was stuck on one post. So being the Brainiac that I am, I tipped the shelf forward a bit to get better leverage and then pulled at the top shelf. It worked! (This is the high point of the story.) Unfortunately when I pulled the top shelf my hand got caught in the under part of the shelf and gouged out a chunk of my knuckle. At which point I let go of the shelf and cursed cuz my hand hurt like a…insert bad word here. Gravity being a real thing, the shelf fell, clipped my head, smashed into my leg, landed on my foot and bounced around on the floor. My first thought was I hoped it didn’t scratch the paint on the column because it was just repainted. My second thought was that I would wait for help before tackling the rest of the shelves.

As I limped back to the server room to check on my software, you would have thought that was the end of it. It wasn’t. The software had finished updating and I went to test it out when I noticed that there were drops of blood on the keyboard. And like any sane person, I looked up at the ceiling to see where it was coming from. Yes, you read that right – the ceiling! When I realized what I was doing, I reminded myself that this wasn’t “The Shining” and Jack Nicholson wasn’t in the training room at work. Then I looked at my hands and realized my hand was bleeding from where it had been gouged. I may have watched one too many horror films.