Halloween Booktacular Day 2!

Welcome to day 2 of the Halloween Booktacular. OUaT has teamed up with Good Choice Reading, Read My Mind, An Avid Reader's Musings, Skyla11377, Books With Bite and Dark Readers. The Halloween Booktacular will run from October 24th until October 31st. Each blog participating will have different post and giveaways going on, so you want to make sure you visit each one of us daily during the celebration.  

Today on day 2 of the booktacular, we bring you a special Halloween post from Author David Bell. David Bell latest book is Cemetery Girl. Today we will be offering one copy of Cemetery Girl to one lucky winner, Thanks to NAL Trade. 

Like a lot of kids, I loved Halloween. I didn’t really care that much about dressing up in a costume. In fact, as I got older, the whole notion of the costume faded in its importance. When I was really young, we used to go to the store and buy a costume, one of those things that came in a box with the hot, heavy mask and rubbery suit we wore over our clothes. But I didn’t really care about that. The costume seemed like more of a necessity.

And to be honest, the candy didn't mean that much to me either. Don't get me wrong, I liked to eat some of it. But I’ve never been a huge fan of candy or sweets, even as a kid, and so the idea that I would get a big bag of candy just for walking around the neighborhood never got me that excited.

In fact, Halloween was always fun when I was little, but it wasn’t as fun as it would become when I got older. Because something changed when I got older—maybe around the time I reached the age of twelve or so. Up until that time, I used to go trick-or-treating with my friends, but I also went trick-or-treating with an adult. Somebody’s parent—sometimes one of the neighbors or sometimes my own dad—would trudge along behind while we went door to door. In fact, I can still picture my dad, his hands stuffed into the pockets of the brown, corduroy coat he used to wear when the weather was cool, walking along the sidewalk behind me, looking very much like he wished he could be back inside his warm house watching TV or reading rather than out in the neighborhood surrounded by pint-sized Darth Vaders and Spidermen.

Along about the age of twelve, something changed. I started to be able to trick-or-treat with my friends from school—and we were able to do it without parental supervision. Talk about the inmates being released from the asylum! We went

everywhere. When I was little, we usually just trick-or-treated on our street, and maybe, if we were lucky, we would hit the street behind us. But once we were released from parental supervision, we really took our act on the road, hitting as many streets and neighborhoods as we could. We didn’t really wear costumes. As I recall, we might put on some ratty old clothes from around the house—maybe even my dad’s corduroy coat—and if anyone asked what we were dressed as, we would give the all-purpose answer: “A bum!” We moved fast under cover of darkness, making it our goal to hit as many houses as possible until our pillowcases were stuffed with candy.

There were a lot of holidays during the year—Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving. And they had their own treats—gifts, food, family. But Halloween was a holiday—the only holiday—that I got to spend with my friends. Away from adults. And since I grew up Catholic and attended Catholic school, there was another bonus. The day after Halloween was the Feast of All Saints, a holy day of obligation. Yes, we had to go to church at some point—but we didn't have to go to school. What could be better? We might even get to stay at another kid’s house for the night and extend the festivities past the hours of trick-or-treating.

I won’t say we were angels on those nights. I admit a pumpkin or two might have been smashed by our hands. Perhaps even an egg or two was thrown. I don’t think anything too valuable was damaged. We had ethics about our pumpkin smashing—we never did it before Halloween. We only did it after the holiday was over, when the pumpkin was destined to die anyway, rotting away on somebody’s front stoop. They really didn’t want it anymore, did they?

As I look back, I see those few Halloweens as a brief moment, a narrow window before I—and my friends—were forced to grow up. Once high school started, trick-or-treating stopped. I attended a private high school with a rigorous academic program—one I couldn't always keep up with—and I remember that Halloween of my freshman year when I stayed in and studied while younger kids trick-or-treated. None of my friends went out—it seemed like someone had decided that high school was the cut off point for kids to go out and beg for candy. And while I felt too old to go out, I remember feeling sad about being inside. Even at that early age—fourteen—I felt a sense of nostalgia: something from my childhood had been lost, that short, wonderful time when I was no longer a child but still a kid.

Halloween let us be free for that one night a year.

I think a few of us have similar Halloween stories. I'm lucky that I have two small boys and get to dress them up and they expect me to dress up with them, so its like going thru my childhood again. I even have candies I hope get passed out at this time of year. I will always be a kid at heart. Thank you David for sharing with us your Halloween story and to NAL.