I love Halloween. I love the dress up, the eat candy, the have-and-go-to-parties, type of Halloween.
I don’t love the scary part. Ever since I saw Michael Jackson’s "Thriller," video when I was a five year old, I have not liked anything scary. No zombies, no mummies, no axe murderers or masked murderers or chainsaw murderers and what not.
I tried to cure myself of my extreme dislike of anything scary. I watched a "Night of the Living Dead," movie in Grade 8 and to this day can hear that "crunch." (Insert full body shiver here.) I saw a "Chucky" and a "Nightmare on Elm Street" movie or two and I was done.
I decided pretty early on that I was more a pretty ponies and unicorns kind of girl that a ghosts and ghouls type. And my monkey is just the same.
Not that we’ve shown her anything scary yet, but we have, since she was one, been going to Boo at the Zoo in Winnipeg with my in-laws. I loved it. Most of us would dress up and go though the less spooky part for the kids. (That suited me fine as well!)
But this year, my sister-in-law’s family couldn’t make it. That was fine. We’d go in with grandma and have a blast anyway — until it occurred to me that perhaps any scary stuff was just too much for our dainty and timid little girl.
My first clue was a trip to McDonalds with her uncle. He picked her up a Happy Meal and she refused to get the toy. Strange for my always-want-toys-despite-having-an-overflowing-room-full-of-them girl.
McDonald’s had the "Hotel Transylvania" toys for kids. It’s a cute Halloween movie for kids that I considered taking her to. I thought the toys were cute, but even cute vampires, ghosts and mummies were too much for my sweet girl’s vivid imagination.
At the grocery store, she couldn’t find a pair of Halloween gloves that didn’t have skeletons or ghosts or long gruesome finger nails on them, so I got us some chocolates to share instead and a pair of just pink gloves.
My monkey is so excited for Halloween, but she is excited for the dressing up, the candy and carving the pumpkin.
She has picked an appropriately not-scary Halloween costume — Tinker Bell, complete with glittering wings and green gloves.
And in the spirit of Halloween, which I think should be more about having fun and less about scaring the bejeebers put of people, I have ditched my standby witch costume and will craft myself into a giant cupcake this year. I just need to figure out how to make a cherry-on-top looking hat.
We will also have a very happy smiling jack-o’-lantern on our step this year and will have, most likely, pink balloon spiders dangling from our eavestrough and many handcrafted and remarkably cute paper pumpkins and witches.
So Halloween isn’t scary at my house ... I sure like it better that way!
Kyla Henderson is a local freelance journalist, business owner and mommy. Her column runs every week in the Community News.
» kyla@lilbitbaby.ca
Republished from the Brandon Sun print edition October 25, 2012
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