Brian's World

End of October

The end of October has always been a unique time for me.  Halloween always comes very quickly, and November follows even faster.  I’ll tell you a little bit about my Halloween, since there is a very low probability I’ll be celebrating this “holiday” as an undergraduate student ever again.

Fundamentally, I’m not opposed to people dressing up in costumes pretending to be something else. I certainly see the merits of escaping from your present struggles, be it as a student, young adult, professional, etc.  People take vacations to get away from this stuff, so putting on a silly outfit for a day seems like a much more cost effective way of handling this need.

Me?  I’m not a huge “dress up and pretend to be something else” kind of person.  I don’t see many long term merits to disguising myself as something else for a few hours, and the short term worries far out way any potential benefit.  Choosing a costume is a challenging task; despite your desire to repeat an outfit, you really don’t want to do so in the event someone recognizes you from a previous occasion.  Reusing a Halloween costume is almost as deadly as reusing a dress at a high school formal.  Never mind the whole appropriateness of the costume…  I’ve found that most females choose a Halloween costume that maximizes exposed skin.  This makes little to no sense, it is the end of October; it is going to be cold outside!  While the girls are busy minimizing their clothing, the guys are maximizing the perceived coolness/popularity of their outfits in an attempt to attract the girl who has the minimum clothing on.  I’m not sure what is desirable about mating with someone who doesn’t understand the weather and intentionally exposes themselves to near-hypothermia conditions… alas I digress.  I’ve always been a fan of the simple ghost costume, consisting of a large white sheet draped over your body with a few strategic holes cut in it.  Not only can you make it yourself, but if you prepare it correctly you can stitch the holes back together and have a white sheet when you finish!

But like I said, I haven’t dressed up for Halloween for quite some time.  I like to cite all the reasons above as secondary reasons that are far easier to explain to people than some of the deeper issues at play.  I get stuck in the following dichotomy when evaluating the Halloween concept:

1. What am I disguising myself to escape?  While I’ve run away from my fair share of problems, I’ve never put on a ghoul mask and pretended they didn’t exist.  That’s a stupid approach when you think about it applied to the other 364 days of the year.  If there are some issues that I’d like to escape on Oct 31, maybe I should find a more feasible solution to them… one that I can pull off Nov 1 if it persists.
2. Aren’t I in a good enough disguise as it is?  There is definitely a limit when putting on extra layers accomplishes very little, and I think dawning a costume definitely exceeds that point.  Is dressing up as something else really going to do a better job of obscuring myself than the tools I employ every other day? I’m lead to believe that what I do every other day works pretty well, my current mask is pretty well glued on.

If I could identify which one of the above situations applied I might be able to identify something acceptable to dawn on Halloween but this time of year rarely presents the opportunity to engage in such a exercise.

Good night moon.