Halloween

I love Halloween!! I think this is one of the most fun holidays of the year! I love the decorations and the costumes and the whole vibe of it. It's so exciting. An added bonus is the freedom to eat candy...a lot of candy, relatively guilt free.
This year should be extra great cuz I now live in a neighborhood not dominated by college students, but by young families with kids. I can't wait to see all of the costumes and welcome back the flood of memories from my own childhood. I remember certain costumes that I wore through the years. One year (or maybe two) I was Wonder Woman. It was your typical little kid's costume: a garbage bag consistency plastic outfit that came in a bag and a plastic mask with microscopic eye and nose holes to breathe out of. You were guaranteed to either suffocate or run into a tree or streetlight if you didnt pull the mask up every two minutes. Another year I was She-Ra. Remember her? She was He-Man's cousin or something. Apparently I was in a phase of wanting to be dominating amazon women. I dunno. One year I particularly remember was being a "moon maiden." This was a costume picked out by my brother. I dont know if he designed it or got it out of a book. I do remember my parents making two very elaborate costumes that year. My brother was a spaceman of some sort and I was the dreaded "moon maiden" that would spark controversy for the next ten years, at least.
Here's the story:

My parents made these costumes and they were so proud. My brother had a giant paper-mache head and costume and I had a cardboard mask that looked a lot like a frog with a larger mouth to me, and a vest. On my head I particularly remember wearing a shower cap (yep just like grandma used to wear) and on my hands the yellow rubber gloves used to wash our dishes. The problem with these two items was that I was about five or so, and they were made for adults. So the shower cap would constantly fall in my eyes and the rubber gloves made it impossible for me to carry anything. Plus, all that rubber made me sweat like crazy.
That year my grandmother (Mama J) took me, my brother, and my 3 cousins to our church for their Halloween festival. One of the events was a costume contest full of Raggedy Anns, Luke Skywalkers, ghosts, vampires, etc. Then you had the Chambers kids: a spaceman with a giant head that my 7 year old brother kept bumping it into everything and a moon maiden that couldn't see or have any function in her hands. Well, I remember little bits of that night. I remember trying figure out how to bob for an apple but gave up and grabbed one with my hand instead. I remember throwing darts at balloons (unsuccessfully, remember I had no use of my hands) but getting some candy anyway for my trouble. I remember being scared of a grown-up that was dressed a little too realistically like Dracula. Then I remember someone on a microphone calling out my name. Mama J grabbed my hand and was pulling me up to the front of the gymnasium, but halfway across my shower cap fell over my eyes again and I was blinded. I don't know who I went up to see but I remember Mama J telling me to hold out my rubber gloved hand and something was placed in it. I pushed up my cap with my other semifunctioning hand and saw a shiny silver dollar.
"What's this?" I asked.
"You won the costume competition!" Mama J exclaimed.
"I did?!" I asked.
"Yes!" she said patting me on my head.

So, I won the costume competition that year. No big deal right? Wrong. You forget that my brother came up with that costume (or something like that). So, naturally he felt the silver dollar should be his. "But I wore it!" I would shout at him. "But I thought of it!" he would shout back. So, the silver dollar was taken from me and not given to Sam either. To keep the peace, my mother took it. She said it was still mine since I technically won, but that I would get it when I was older. So, it's place was now in my mother's jewelry box. It stayed there until high school.
Every so often though, my brother would bring it all back up again. "Well, I should have gotten that silver dollar!" He would state forcefully at the most random moments of an argument that had nothing to do with that Halloween so many years ago. I think he is still a little bitter about it.