Halloween
All my life, I’ve had a terrible handicap to overcome.
It’s nothing that would qualify me as a sideshow attraction, like being the feathered puffin boy, or aphid-man.
Nevertheless, my affliction is in many ways worse – I was born on Halloween.
I once complained of my plight to the lovely Mrs. Borengasser.
“It could have been worse,” she says. “You could have been born on April Fools’ Day.” She thinks a moment. “Or Christmas. People whose birthdays fall on Christmas never seem to get as many girts as everyone else.”
“Hah!” I comment. “Being born on April Fools’ Day is a piece of birthday cake. You have to put up with a cheap joke or two, and that’s it. Christmas is even easier. I’d gladly have my birthday legally changed to Christmas.”
“What’s so bad about Halloween?” she asks.
I explain. “A birthday is supposed to be an important, even solemn, occasion. But if your birthday lands on October 31st, forget it. Gangs of crazed children roam your neighborhood, dressed like things you’d dream about after a midnight snack of pickled smelt and Brussels sprout pie.”
I’m not finished. “On your birthday, you should be receiving gifts. Instead, you have to hand out gifts to these guttersnipes, with the threat of vandalism hanging over your head if you should dare disappoint them.”
“Maybe it would help if you had a birthday party,” suggests the lovely Mrs. Borengasser.
“I had a birthday party once, and that was enough for me, thank you. Everybody brought grotesquely carved pumpkins. The called them Dan-O’-Lanterns.”
“But they gave you gifts, didn’t they?” she asks.
“Yeah, but I had to bob for them – blindfolded.”
“Sounds messy,” she speculates.
“It was awful,” I tell her. “And, you’d think damp cupcakes and soggy paperback books would be bad enough.”
“It got worse?”
“Do you have any idea how bad a wet hamster tastes?”
“Extremely bad would be my guess,” she says. “How about a birthday cake?”
“A skull with chocolate mousse eye sockets.”
“What else?” she asks. “Was it a surprise party?”
“I’ll say. There I was, sitting in the dark so Trick or Treaters would think I wasn’t home…”
“And everyone was sitting in the same room with you?” she conjectures.
“You’ve got it,” I say. “They’d all snuck in while the lights were off. I thought I was breathing awfully loud. It turned out I was hearing myself and thirty others.”
“And then they all yelled, ‘Happy Birthday’?”
‘Oh, no,” I reply. “They all shrieked ‘Boo!’”
“That’s cute,” she says. “What did you do then?”
“I changed clothes, of course.”
“Of course,” she agrees, nodding. She pauses. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t realize how traumatic it’s been for you. Isn’t there anything good about having a birthday on Halloween?”
I think about it. “Well, perhaps just one thing,” I finally admit.
“Complaining about it?”
“How’d you know?”