misAdventures of Workmonkey 3.0

You aren't exactly learning something when I remind you that Halloween has traditionally been my favorite holiday. Halloween stands as the intersection of serveral elements I hold dear to my heart. Firstly, you have the emotion of fear and mystery as the foundation of the holiday. As i've previously explained, never is my mind more crisp and clear than when I am experiencing the adrenaline surge caused by a frightful encounter, whether that is a movie or a real-life event. I think it stems from my days in middle school, living in the brand-new home in Rancho Bernardo my family had just moved to from Buffalo Grove, Illinois. This home was big and cavernous, filled with the hollow spanish tile popular in San Diego canyon homes. Brand new, the house had none of the lived-in comfort of a usual house. It was nothing but rooms, walls, and bodies. It sat at the lip of a canyon in a newly-built community, so there was nothing beyond our backyard save for sage brush, ice plants, and endless dark. Suffice to say, it all combined to create a petri dish for my active imagination. I vividly remember waking up countless nights close to 3 AM, sure I had heard someone moving about downstairs. With fear coursing through my veins, my senses heightened. I could hear the sound of a daddy longlegs walking on the living room wall, a carpet fiber swaying under the air conditioner, the dropping of a single leaf outside onto the grass. My eyes could penetrate dark, and I could distinguish shades of shadows, pick apart single filaments of light streaming through the window. I could smell intruders. Feel them. I even had a six sense that could see through walls and floors. Simply by looking down, I could bring to mind's eye the gruff, unshaven murder creeping downstairs, his eight-inch butcher knife reflecting a metallic glow from the microwave's digital clock. Of course, once I woke up my brother to help me investigate, the murderer, and all evidence of his existence, would be gone. But I knew he had been there. I had saved myself, with help of my extraordinary sensory skill.

This clarity of thought and enhanced senses, along with the excitement of the uknown, is recalled every time I watch a horror movie, attend a haunted house, or watch Ghost Hunters. The mystery behind scientific unknowns appeals to me. The supernatural is the one thing scientists don't have an explanation for, which allows me to posit my own theories, and use my imagination. Somehow, ghosts are more exciting to me than particle physics.

The second element of Halloween that has always pleased me is the dress up factor. Something about being what you are not, and the escape and expression it allows you, has always been pleasing to me. To mention nothing of the slut factor. Halloween is the one day each year every single girl wants to dress up like a slut, which I highly approve of. At this year's Halloween party at Hotel Giraffe in the East Side, every single one of the 200 or so women there were dressed as every man's sexual fantasy. There were slutty pirates, slutty sluts, slutty cops, slutty tennis players, slutty nurses, slutty cowgirls, slutty devils, slutty angels, slutty apartment supers, slutty bears, slutty telephone maintenance repair women. I'm not sure what it is about halloween that unleashes every girls inner-slut, but I like it.

Unfortunately, my days as a Halloween fan are coming to an end. It is turning into St. Patrick's Day, or worse, a glorified Cinco De Mayo, like a Cinco de Octobre or something. It is simply an excuse to go to a bar. Nowhere can I find the ultimate Halloween celebration, which would be a night of horror movies, ouija boards, and a trip to the cemetary or local abaondoned mental hospital. So the time has come for me to stay at home for the holiday, hide in the hallways, and terrify any kid that comes remotely close to my door. It is only right to give him the gift of mental clarity that I cherish so much.