It was an odd year for Halloween here in Vermont. Typically Halloween is used as an opportunity to either conjure up the dead or celebrate those who’ve passed on into the great mortuary in the sky. In contrast to our banal day-to-day lives Halloween gives us a chance to play the impish tricksters or treat our neighbors to the fright of their lives.
In order for Halloween to be effective, it helps if one can make the night scarier than the day, however, a quick glance at the headlines in the news and you realize it’s an uphill task here in the Green Mountain state.
With all of the talk in the news about the failing status of American education, some activist friends of mine and I decided to use this Halloween as an opportunity to supplement the education our kids seem to be missing out on in public schools.
This means I had to retire my typical Banana Hammock costume, an oversized banana-shaped hammock that can hold an easy quarter-ton of candy, in favor of trying to blend in so as not to rile my edgy neighbors. It was also forecast to be windy, and I didn’t want to end up trapped upside down in a Box Elder tree like what happened a few years ago when my hammock turned into a sail. Rather than help me down, the neighbor kids thought I was a piñata and beat the Reese’s Pieces out of me. When I tried to describe my attackers, the police-woman laughed so hard she accidentally tazed her partner. Even if they were “only children,” my town is known to have some of the finest little leaguers in the state, and I had the compound fractures to prove it. In my town, justice is blind and dumb.
Given this economy, where I just paid $60 to do five loads at the local Laundromat, my other issue was price. Most of the costumes for fully grown men who want to participate in a children’s activity are ridiculously expensive gowns with sequins and fishnet stockings that require hours and hours of make-up and wig preparation, not to mention high heels that are patently unsafe to walk the semi-maintained roads of small-town Vermont. As much as I wanted to help children learn to read gooder I just couldn’t justify the expense.
So, in keeping with my budget and our mission, I borrowed a doctor friend’s white jacket and scrubs and fashioned an oversized syringe out of taped-together two-liter bottles with a screwdriver sticking out the end and wrote “vaccine” in oversized letters on it. On my backpack, where I kept the evening’s haul of sweets, I wrote “puberty blockers” in glo-in-the-dark lettering, and, well, the fun just created itself!
Thankfully some of our townsfolk take Halloween more seriously than a pre-mature case of myocarditis, so I was able to stand statue-like in someone’s front yard make-shift cemetery replete with more skeletons than a politician’s closet. As the children walked by in their sweet little princess and pumpkin costumes, the audible cries of “Don’t make me go up there, Mommy!” were worth every bit of low-grade neuropathy I could feel settling into my toes.
Our other Halloween radical went as Donald Trump, which seemed like a stroke of genius for the obvious terror factor, until he was shot at multiple times, caused at least two car accidents, and one lady fell into cardiac arrest after opening her door. He ran past me at one point, followed by an angry mob chasing him at low speeds because most of them were overweight moms dragging their little ones as fast as their tiny legs could go. Luckily, he found safe haven at the Jake’s gas station on Route 5, where a group of Trump supporters were so convinced it was the real Don they wouldn’t leave until he vowed to throw crooked Hillary in prison with Creepy Joe.
Our other friend decided to go as Robert Kennedy Jr., who would take each door knocking as an opportunity to educate the neighbors about “agency capture” and the failings of “crony capitalism” but was repeatedly chastised as an “anti-vaxxer” to the point he even had used needles thrown at him as he passed a homeless encampment. Talk about ironic, Alannis!
In a daring move, yet another one of our friends went as Justin Trudeau dressed in black-face, which admittedly could get you strung up in my town – not for being black but for cultural appropriation of a protected class – however, he made up for it by dressing as Thomas Sowell and saying things like:
“Racism is not dead, but it is on life support – kept alive by politicians, race hustlers, and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as ‘racist’”
and
“There is usually only a limited amount of damage that can be done by dull or stupid people. For creating a truly monumental disaster, you need people with high IQs.”
Needless to say, he was a HUGE hit with the kids and, at one point, received a standing ovation from a group of teens dressed as a herd of cows. Not gonna lie. I got a little choked up.
Last but certainly not least was our friend, who dressed up as Senator Bernie Sanders who seated himself in a lawn chair with mittens and a mask. This iconic image was so attractive to Vermonters that he was constantly surrounded by large groups, and as the children would gather with their parents, Uncle Bernie would have them pour their bags of candy onto the ground and then redistribute the goodies until
everyone had the exact same amount. Despite being wildly unpopular with the harder-working children, it served as a powerful lesson about economics and the blessings of socialism.
Sometimes, it pays to actually feel the Bern kids.
