When I saw the kids in the costumes on Trick or Treat night last week, I felt a little envious. Not of the candy because I knew I would dip into my daughter\u2019s stash when she got home. I envied the costumes.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t get much of a chance to celebrate Halloween anymore. We\u2019re really not the \u201cdress up in a couples costume\u201d kind of folks. We do have a party at work, but I just don\u2019t have the energy to go all out for that.<\/p>\n
That hasn\u2019t always been the case. I did have some fun costumes at my old job, but once the person who lived to organize Halloween parties got a new job, the excitement kind of wore off.<\/p>\n
The reality is that I don\u2019t remember ever really having an outstanding costume. I probably had some cool ones as a kid, but nothing really stands out in my memory.<\/p>\n
I do remember going as \u201cThe Unknown Comic\u201d to a school event in sixth or seventh grade, but apparently no one else watched \u201cthe Gong Show.\u201d I spent the whole night trying to explain why I had a bag on my head and why people should find it so funny.<\/p>\n
Maybe that influences my current attitude on Halloween costumes. I wouldn\u2019t mind dressing up, but don\u2019t know if it\u2019s worth the hassle. My favorite idea would take way too much time to explain.<\/p>\n
As a freshman in college, I could not wait for Halloween. We had heard about legendary parties at fraternities across campus. I didn\u2019t care that I didn\u2019t have a good idea that fall. I just wanted to have fun.<\/p>\n
A few days before the weekend, everything started to unravel. I don\u2019t know how the rumors started, but they spread like wildfire. For a little while, it looked like no one would get to celebrate Halloween on my western Pennsylvania campus in 1986.<\/p>\n
I remember the main details \u2013 a man dressed as Little Bo Peep was going to show up on a college campus which shared a name with a mountain range, a county and a river and massacre students at a Halloween party.<\/p>\n
People reacted in many different ways. Some went home for the weekend. Some put on a brave face. In the end, the parties went on, the rumor turned out to be one recycled from other colleges in the past and people dressed up like normal.<\/p>\n
Of course, that included a few smart alecks who actually dressed up as Little Bo Peep. I don\u2019t remember seeing any at the parties I attended, but I did see one running across campus that weekend yelling something about lost sheep.<\/p>\n
I never even thought about wearing that costume, but have wanted to ever since. I don\u2019t think I considered it the rest of my college career and would have been too chicken to do it if the idea did cross my mind.<\/p>\n
I have the gumption to do it now, but really don\u2019t feel like explaining the whole story every time someone asks me why I chose Little Bo Beep. I don\u2019t even have one of the \u201cI Survived Bo Peep\u201d t-shirts that cropped up on campus that weekend 25 years ago.<\/p>\n
So I\u2019ll just drown my sorrows with a Reese\u2019s Cup I snuck out of my daughter\u2019s stash. She can deal \u2013 she had an awesome costume.<\/p>\n
When I saw the kids in the costumes on Trick or Treat night last week, I felt a little envious. Not of the candy because I knew I would dip into my daughter\u2019s stash when she got home. I envied…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,3,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-college","category-columns","category-halloween","wpcat-58-id","wpcat-3-id","wpcat-59-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1552"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1554,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1552\/revisions\/1554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regularguycolumn.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}