I personally have never been a big fan of Halloween as a holiday, but I have heard of entire cities that live and die by this holiday. They roll out the dead carpet by showing Munster reruns on a continuous loop at their respective municipal City Halls, and Metro buses rain the streets with gummy worms, M&M’s, and chocolate necklaces that come apart and melt into the cracks of sidewalks.
Actually, the very first inklings of our present-day Halloween began as a mixture of holidays some 2000 years ago. Back then a blend of traditions marking the end of harvest time eventually evolved into a travelling festival of kids dressed in ghoulish and gooney costumes filling their Target bags with lots and lots of candy. If there was a full moon during the celebration, so much the better, but it wasn’t an essential player. That thinking was about to change.
I’m not sure why my Halloween enthusiasm took a tailspin and buried itself in the proverbial graveyard of lost spirits. Once upon a time, I must have indulged in too many Starbursts and gotten sick, and decided the collection and consumption of sweets was just not worth the hype. As a result, I retired from Halloween when I was about twelve, celebrating one last time with a few friends that all signed my Halloween retirement card, and I believe we ate one last Snicker’s Bar just to usher out any of the old Halloween habits.
Then something came along that caused a serious shift in my thinking. Maybe there was a waxing crescent moon or even perhaps a waning gibbous, or maybe my biorhythms took a left turn at the testosterone round-about. In any case, I felt a tinge of my Halloween spirit return, and with it, the desire to have a new get-up, a Halloween costume. It was time, I told myself, as the moon hit full tilt, to have a go at dressing the part and revisiting the Halloween spirit.
Turns out, the timing could not have better. The next morning the fairgrounds of Gipson County were opening their gates for the bi-annual Antique and Collectible Show. Donning the open halls and pole barns was a melting pot of collectors and craftsman from all over the state, selling all kinds of, well, old stuff, lots and lots of very old stuff. Surely, I thought, there had to be a costume in one of those 350 booths that might fit the bill and my body this Halloween season.
You know what they say about one man’s trash being another man’s treasure? Well… this show had stuff from not just one man but from every man who ever lived, and a ton that were dead too. It was like a hoarder heaven with objects of all sorts piled from floor to ceiling since time began. In fact, hoarders do come here and believe they have actually died and gone to heaven. When the show is over and the doors are closing, these people do not want to return to the other side, back to earth, and have to be escorted out, some with force, by security.
What impressed me, however, was that every booth vendor at the show had a story to tell about every object, which can be exhausting if you happen to be on the receiving end, which I was.
For example, in one booth, I was cornered by a man who was trying to sell me a lantern that had been pulled from the worst mining disaster in West Virginia history. Talk about spooky and scary. Talk about Halloween. Talk about a man who could talk. Wow. The owner, somewhat sooty and dusty himself, started his story from when West Virginia first became a state in 1863, a long, long time ago. A half hour in, feeling somewhat like a collectible myself, I couldn’t keep focused, and my glance drifted over to a booth displaying a curiously long, blue uniform with a sparkle of intergalactic flare.
This I had to see.
I’m going to get to the part about this blue suit worn my a former astronaut, and how I talked the owner into letting me try it on in the restroom, but first, let me just say that everything you ever thought would be uncomfortable about being in an astronaut’s suit is true. And mind you, they really aren’t meant to be worn on earth where gravity and surface tension makes them more like wearing a large, clingy, zip lock bag. I would also like to say that I found it quite unnatural to try on something that was plastered with official insignias, Velcro wraps, and holes for things going in and holes for things going out. I understand everyone has to eat, but looking at the bottom flap of the suit, also bright blue, I had to question why NASA spent so much time figuring out how an astronaut was going to go to the bathroom on the moon. I mean, there aren’t a lot of people up there. Pretty private, right? So what’s the big deal about the flap in the back? You’re up there, no one is around for miles and miles, you drop your drawers, you potty and boom, you’re done. No one’s the wiser until the next moon landing, which might possibly be another three hundred million years or so. My opinion, that big hole in the back was a lot of wasted research.
Anyway, off to the restroom I went to try it on. I thought for $100, it’s better safe than sorry.
Of course, when it is 8AM on a Saturday morning and you are in a bathroom stall at the Gipson County Fairgrounds, every man walking in has had a couple a couple cups of coffee and a chili-corndog. The bathroom’s a popular place to be, and I’m right there for different reasons, shuffling my feet, nervously waiting my turn, whistling occasionally, for a stall to become available so I can try on my official 1969 bright blue astronaut suit.
For the record, I’m not that big of a person, but the stall I entered wasn’t very big either. I’d like to say I slipped right out of my clothes, no problem, but truthfully, I was making a lot more noise than most people do in a bathroom stall. I hadn’t tried on a Onesie since I was forty-five, which is another story, but I schlumped into the blue suit, the full length, a little tight mind you, pulled the arms up over my shoulders, and zipped myself in. As far as I was concerned, I was ready for liftoff!
Oh…by the way…did I mention I have a torn rotator cuff? Aaaaa… Yea, I do.
Yet, in my kid mind, rocket boosters were firing, and childhood aspirations of becoming a NASA pilot flashed before me. I was suddenly floating in the middle of a dream, smiling from ear to ear, wishing my 6 th grade science teacher who threw away my aluminum foil space helmet project, the one with the flashlight duct taped to the top, could see me now. I was on that Apollo space capsule… oh yes I was…part of the Apollo crew blasting off at the Cape for a rendezvous with a moon crater of my choosing. Oh man, I thought, this bright blue suit has my name all over it!
Unfortunately, this is where Houston-we-have-a-problem comes in at the Gipson County Antique and Collectible Show because I could not get out of the suit to save my life.
Bob’s your uncle, I could not. My shoulder wasn’t budging. And I got to tell you I could have cared less about dressing up for Halloween then or anytime in the future. Pain, that oh-so-human-reminder, was pouring down my arm as I tried to turn and twist my immovable shoulder out of the suit. Tiny, medium and large drops of sweat popped out on my forehead, then small, medium and large tears formed in my eyes like they did the time I jammed my thumb in the car door. I had absolutely no thoughts of ever dressing up for Halloween whatsoever – that holiday died immediatley. I got dizzy, the world started spinning around me, and I lost all communications with the reality, including earth. Actually, it was probably a lot like being a real astronaut, except that here I had a real toilet right next to me.
And how are you going to ask for help when you are in an astronaut suit in the men’s room at the Gipson County Antique and Collectible Show?
Finally, in desperation, risking losing my entire arm, I wwwwrrrrenched my body out with such brute force I believe my face took on the shape of a dehydrated prune. After a couple of cannisters of straight oxygen though, I was able to get my pulse down under 2000 rpm’s, calmly dress and then return to booth number 8 where I handed the space suit back to the vendor.
“You ok? You look a little pale,” he said.
“I’m…I’m… a… fine. Yes,” I stammered, “I’m ok. I just get a little weepy when I get around astronaut suits. It’s history, you know, it’ll do that to a person.”
But truthfully, I was glad to back on earth and out of that Onesie with my own regular clothes on, my jeans and Thorlo socks from Target, a plain black T-shirt and a faded gray jacket from The Gap that had a little tag in the back with an S for small and two side pockets – no Velcro, no insignias, no patches or holes for oxygen or potty breaks – just an old fashioned zipper that went up and down, without any fuss.