Lurking around the corner of next week is Halloween, and come Tuesday night, tens of thousands people will crowd Franklin Street in a drunken, drugged-up frenzy, ready to whoop it up over some rags and ketchup they put together to become a bloody man-type thing.
Or they could always go as crazy pickle-arm-man or tetherball-head.
I would disclose the details of my costume, but a dazzling, grotesque idea hasn't come to mind yet, so in the meantime here's a festive, scary story:
One night back in high school a couple of friends and I were playing with a Ouija board. We turned out all the lights in the room except for a dim halogen lamp. Everybody dried their palms of sweat and placed their fingers on the planchette.
The first question, asked by yours truly, was, "If there is a spirit in the room, let its presence be known." The light faded to blackness.
We sat confused in the dark for about 15 seconds wondering if the power went out, but when we saw the hallway light seeping in underneath the door, we all jumped up and started freaking out like we had crawly things attacking us.
How do you explain the gradual dimming of the light when no one was near the lamp? Creepy .
But there are always the fun, not-so-scary aspects to Halloween, like when some friends and I went to New Orleans last year as lasciviously-garbed cowgirls and Indians. Walking down Bourbon Street in an inebriated stupor as strange foreign men kept snapping photos and grabbing for our breasts was both, er, exhilarating and frightening.
And I'll never forget the grand old time I had freshman year when I spent Halloween arguing with a psychotic ex-boyfriend, or the next year when I babysat a friend during a vomit-fest.
