As a great celebrator of many holidays, I understand, admire, and, frankly, am a little envious of those who make a big deal out of Halloween. I’m not among them.
At first glance, it’s a day that seems designed just for me, a person whose love of theme parties, decorating, and distractions in the form of marking special occasions knows almost no bounds. But adult Halloween rituals put heavy emphasis on alcohol and late nights, neither of which I particularly like, and I don’t have children for whom to craft elaborate costumes and whose candy to steal. Besides admiring pictures of tiny humanoid hamburgers and ducks and astronauts and narwhals on social media, I can’t Halloween vicariously through other people’s offspring, either. Indeed, despite my best efforts, I’ve greeted nary a trick-or-treater at my door in all my time in Toronto: I used to live in an apartment above a shop on a street not targeted by kids rightfully trying to maximize the few hours a year they’re encouraged to take candy from strangers (what a weird mind game, if you think about it), and now I live in a building with only a handful of residents of trick-or-treating age. When I’m inspired to make any effort to get in the spirit (of commercialism? of tradition? I dunno), I carve a pumpkin and put it on the balcony. Knives, however, make me nervous, and this is the rare case in which pushing through my anxiety has little payoff since when I do scrounge up the enthusiasm necessary to make a Jack o’ Lantern, I inevitably light the imperfect gourd of my labour only once, forget about it, and find my sad excuse of a Halloween celebration rotting when it’s time to put the Christmas lights up.
It doesn’t help that when I look back at the October 31s in what should’ve been my golden trick-or-treating years, I’m brought back to the angst that came with them.
See, Halloween can be a stressful affair for any tall kid with an anxiety disorder, and I was really, really tall and really, really anxious. As Halloween approached, I’d thus brace myself for judgemental stares and the dreaded question: “Aren’t you too old for this?”
I’m nine, lady, was the dream response I never worked up the courage to mutter, opting instead to apologize for a crime I hadn’t committed and then find somewhere secluded to cry.
To avoid being made to feel as if I were trying to get away with something, I put a great deal of time and effort into figuring out how to disguise my height, something my average-sized friends didn’t need to take into account. It never occurred to me that I could embrace the fact that I could’ve passed as a teenager beginning when my age was still in the single digits. Height was nothing but a burden that gave me absolutely no pleasure to bear. It was yet another physical peculiarity that made me stick out in a crowd when all I wanted was to blend in, and it heightened adults’ expectations of me. (“Heightened” pun not intended when I wrote this post but very much noticed and appreciated upon editing. I’m certainly not beneath laughing at and with myself.) If I could’ve traded my long limbs for something more normal, like, um, seal flippers or something, I’d have very seriously contemplated a surgical intervention.
Further compounding my Halloween issues was my perfectionistic, people-pleasing brain, which wasn’t willing to sacrifice other characteristics of an A+ costume such as creativity and flawless execution. This meant that I couldn’t pass for your standard-sized ghost by wearing a sheet over my head and going trick-or-treating on my knees.
The years I was ten and eleven, the last I made the rounds before giving up and buying discounted candy the day after Halloween like any self-respecting and demoralized preadolescent of skyscraper dimensions, my height-cloaking costumes were as impressive as they were horribly uncomfortable.
The first of these was a mailbox. This idea appealed to me because it would allow me to conceal my entire self—ideal given my deep insecurity about most aspects of my appearance. The concept was simple: all I needed was a large box, a ton of paint, and a craft knife with which to cut a slot. I coated the carton in several layers of Canada Post red and designed it so that the flap could be pulled open and candy delivered straight into a bag I secured to the inside. Pretty clever, right? The problem—because of course there was a problem; again, nothing comes easy to a tall kid on Halloween—was that the box’s dimensions inhibited my ability to take more than the shortest of steps. I shuffled my way around a block or two before calling it quits, going home, and shedding my cardboard jail in sweet relief.
Having learned from this mistake, I prioritized leg movement the following October. After workshopping several ideas, I landed on what seemed like a real winner. How hadn’t it occurred to me sooner? I’d be a pixie sitting on a toadstool. Not your typical bipedal elf, mind you, for the beauty of this costume lay in the fact that it would leave my real legs free to move at will, conveniently hidden under a faux mushroom-stem skirt, while stuffed-pantyhose decoys distracted prying, height-shaming eyes from the physical truth that lay beneath a voluminous brown-flannel exterior.
It took many weeks and endless hours of careful planning and execution, but I pulled it off, and instead of unwelcome comments and that much-feared “you’re too old for this” look, my costume was met with admiration and compliments. It was a triumph that left me energized for days (all the sugar from the miniature Coffee Crisps also helped with that buzz).
I decided to end my trick-or-treating career on that high note rather than risk things not going my way the next time around. It just didn’t feel worth it.
And so tonight, dear readers, please be gentle with all trick-or-treaters who knock on your door at a reasonable hour. That lanky Minion or giant anthropomorphized burrito or, yes, 5’10” pixie—whether sitting on a toadstool or with legs revealed—might be an overly sensitive eleven-year-old just trying to have a relatively normal Halloween experience. Or he/she/they might be a nineteen-year-old who channeled their energy into crafting an enormous tortilla shell, and isn’t that worth a couple of two-inch chocolate bars?
De Morbo Sacro: Life and/with Epilepsy 