I only bought the candy corns to fill the little pumpkin candy jar in the kitchen, thus creating a festive center piece. Now, after only three days, I have eaten over half the jar all on my own. I love candy corn. I love candy corn almost as much as I love Halloween itself. Unlike my love for the dark holiday, my love for candy corn goes completely unrecognized all year long then all of a sudden the leaves change color and bam! I'm craving orange cone-shaped candies. But, awe, Halloween itself could last all year long and I would never tire of it.
My love for Halloween started back when I was just a little girl. My brothers adored the holiday and started preparing for it months in advance. I remember spending hours letting Kirt practice his garish makeup applications to my face, transforming me from a little girl to a dead victorian-aged ghost. The look didn't fit well with the summer time, which made parading around outside in ghoulish makeup and costume even more fun for me.
When Halloween night itself finally arrived, I felt like a movie star about to hit the red carpet. Usually, my brothers had me (in full costume and scary makeup) standing in my parent's long windows upstairs, a green light luminating my eerie figure from behind. I would pantomime a desperate scream and slide my hands down the window as if trying to escape my evil captor. It was always a big attraction. Children who came trick-or-treating in their rainbow bright and he-man costumes would stand under the window for extended amounts of time staring up at me in horror. It was all I could do to keep from cracking a smile and killing the whole effect.
Sometimes my brother, Troy, would dress as a mad-scientist and bring some real science "accessories" from his laboratory into the fun. One year, my brother, Kirt made my brother Ryan's face look as though it had been hacked to pieces by a meat cleaver then told him to hide in the irrigation ditch out in front of our house and slither up out of it whenever kids came trotting by. That one actually got us all in a little trouble later.
Halloween always had this way of bringing me and my family closer in a way that no other holiday could. Some families bond while sipping egg-nog and singing christmas carols, but a family as strange as mine, well, we bond over the screams of small children.
I love Halloween. I love the crisp air, the brightly colored leaves littering the walk ways outside. I love the spooky decorations and eerie black lights. I love the dusty old costumes and smell of pancake makeup. And, most of all I love being able to be someone else for a night. Someone uninhibited, who dares to be dark or strange or mysterious. I love the memories I have that shaped my perception of this magical holiday. Memories I have of my brothers and I collaborating ideas to make a haunted house that could put any Hitchcock film to shame. Halloween reminds me of these things, and of us being together and happy and uncomplicated. And, of course I love it for the candy corn.
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