The ghostly and supernatural just don’t scare me. Put me in a graveyard at night, with the wind howling and an organ playing, and I’ll settle in and take a little nap.
Jason. Freddie. Casper. I’ll hang with any of them.
There’s only one thing that scares me. It’ll happen this Saturday afternoon as I stand in my closet. I’ll get pale, cold and clammy, and for a moment I’ll be tempted to take a chain saw to the whole house.
I’m petrified of Halloween costume parties. Yikes! Nothing makes me want to run and hide more than those.
I’m awful. I’m lame. I wait until 10 minutes before the party starts and mix together whatever I can, which is no wonder I always look like such a dork. Maybe this year I’ll find a pocket-protector and actually go as one.
Or I could be Norman Bates from “Psycho.”
Put me in a time machine and send me to Thanksgiving. I just don’t have the creativity necessary to pull this off.
What makes it worse is that I’m surrounded by people who have the creativity that would make Alfred Hitchcock and Steven Spielberg proud.
The hosts of the annual neighborhood “Boo Bash,” Jeff and Norean Wilbert, must have The Munsters and The Adams Family as distant relatives. No one puts on a better Halloween party than they do.
My wife is always clever and cute at the same time. Last year she was a pretty darn good-looking French maid. Another year she was Glenda the Good Witch. I’d understand it if she went this year as one of the Desperate Housewives.
Then there’s Kent Scheper, my next-door neighbor. By day, he is a salesman who, aside from being the biggest Bengal fanatic I’ve ever seen, seems to be pretty normal. He and his wife, Amanda, have two beautiful girls, Brooke and Jordan.
But on Halloween, Kent turns into something like out of a Hollywood movie.
One year, he was Elvis — a hunka’ hunka’ burnin’ love. Then he was Austin Powers — complete with mangy teeth and a spectacular “Yeah, Baby!”
Last year, he outdid himself, adorning himself in a perfect likeness of The Joker from Batman fame — with wild clothes, clown smile, and that hideous laugh. Amanda went as his lovely sidekick, Catwoman.
Holy, two-timer, Batman! I’d have called Commissioner Gordon on the Bat phone but my character was too stupid to know what a phone is.
It’s time for a change.
This year, I’m going to try. As I get older, I tend to get more intolerant of what I either don’t like or don’t do well, but it’s time to change that. If putting on a costume and acting goofy is what I need to do, well, I guess it’s not much different than being my normal self and acting goofy.
So I figure I’ll go as George Clooney, since he has sex appeal and charisma that I’m sure I can copy. Or maybe I can be John Grishman, since his writing style is something surely I can imitate. Or how about The Incredible Hulk? Rambo? Bruce Springsteen?
Now THAT’s scary. This may be tougher than I thought.
Better get the pocket protector, huh?
Jeff Kirby is a lawyer and writer who lives in Springboro. He can be reached at jeffkirby1@aol.com.
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