Halloween, like many other holidays is an exciting time of the year for me. But Halloween has always been my absolute favorite. What other day of the year can you pretend to be someone or something other than yourself, and get free cany to boot? Halloween was the best when I was a child because my sister and I used much care and creativity in our preparation. It was the one night a year that we could display our independence, determination, and responsibility; and it felt great.

My sister and I would plan our costumes with much thought and detail. Months in advance, we would decide what character we would play for the night usually a witch or vampire. We had to be sure that our costumes appropriately coordinated with one another. Our parents were never terribly interested in Halloween and considered it frivolous to spend money on something that was only going to be worn for one night so my sister and I fabricted our costumes ourselves. We both had a working knowledge of sewing and could assemble some pretty amazing outfits. We measured one another and spent many days inside making designs and patterns. Thankfully we were both fairly creative because all of our fabric consisted of extra pieces laying about or altered hand-me-downs, which took a lot of imagination to assemble. A lot of patience and work went into our creations. As a result of all of our hard word, the end product was almost never a disappointment especially when elaborate face paint was added.

Nothing could compare to Halloween night! We dressed and primped ourselves hours before sunset staring at ourselves in the mirror, continuing to alter things until there was almost no resemblance to our true selves left. When we were ready to go out, we carefully selected a pillowcase each; we were certain that pillowcases were the best kind of bag to use because it is hard to tell exactly how much candy is inside of it, and we were sure we could get "pity candy" if the giver thought we didn't have much.

My sister and I always discussed our route in detail. Our parents didn't accompany us after kindergarten, so we had an immense amount of freedom. Usually we would choose a high class, "richy" neighborhood, sometimes walking miles in the hopes of getting a full size candy bar or two.

Once there, we would work our way along one side of the street, then cross and make our way back in and out of different developments and complexes. We always had to be careful to stay away from groups of children as of course, that affected the amount of candy given. We worked the chipper people in their warm condos until there was no more candy to be given. The cold of the autumn night or our sore feet were not a factor to us. One year it rained on us the whole night. Of course we siezed the opportunity and stuck it out to claim the candy of all of the children that had given up. Even though we were thoroughly drenched and much of our candy was water damaged, it still seemed worth it at the time.

When we finally arrived home, tired, freezing, and still excited to the core, we would sit on the living room floor and check our candy for needles, drugs, or even just to see if it was opened. We never did find any toxic candy, but we faithfully tossed out anything that looked questionable. Then we began to make piles of our different types of candy, chocolate, lollypops, taffy, gum, etc. When we were through we routinely traded one another until we were both satisfied of our takings; each of us was sure that we had secretly made out better than the other in our deals.

There was always a feeling of great accomplishment that resonated within us because of the skills that we used to make each year different and prosperous. That marked the end of our wonderful holiday. But it still lived on in our hearts and slowly decaying teeth for months, until the candy-booty was long gone.

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