Halloween loses magic at college

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. As a kid, I especially liked it, maybe because it was the one season when the neighbors didn't complain about the decorations we left in the front yard all year.\nI remember when I first started going trick-or-treating. My mother, ever the jokester, dressed me up as a deer and sent me out to the neighborhood houses. This joke wasn't particularly funny, when one considers the ratio of hunters to small boys dressed as deer in my town. And the main evening entertainment of those hunters in the neighborhood included sitting on the porch eating pork and beans out of a can and cocking and uncocking a shotgun. \nI was 13 before I even knew it was called "trick or treating." I thought the phrase was "Please don't shoot. Can I have some of that?"\nAfter a few excited hunters buzzed my tail, my mom reluctantly gave me an alien costume. At the first house I visited, some good ol' boy was sitting on his porch with the obligatory shotgun. He had a big wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek, and I went up to him and opened my "can I have some" bag with a big smile. Apparently, he thought I was carrying some form of new disposable spittoon, because what I got sure didn't look like candy -- didn't taste like it, either. \nThat first year as an alien, all that I got was two cigarettes, a spent shotgun shell, six pennies and a handful of nacho cheese dip. I did better in subsequent years, and if I didn't, I resorted to tricking people. That plan wasn't as easy as it sounds in a town where a tree full of toilet paper is regarded as a blessing from the Big Lots fairy.\nAs a grown-up, I don't look forward to Halloween like I used to. It just isn't the same at college. Watching horror movies just doesn't do it for me. How am I supposed to be afraid of a killer who is constantly getting the crap kicked out of him by a 17-year-old babysitter? \nThese movies don't even scare the people they're intended to scare. Remember those sorority girl slasher movies? You can't scare sorority girls with a psycho killer. They're too peppy. "Ohmagod, Lindsay, our entire house has been brutally mutilated with a pick axe by an insane killer. Let's make T-shirts!" \nNo, if you want to scare sorority girls, you've got to come up with movie titles such as "The Day the Bakery Ran Out of Chocolate Chip Bagels." But if you really want to scare one, just tell her going to the tanning bed six times a week doesn't make her look any thinner.\nI have tried going to costume parties, but I always end up going as the "guy in the corner who nobody talks to," and the only thing that scares me at these parties is just how tight those black stretchy pants can get.\nI am at a moment of real crisis. Halloween is the one day of the year I really look forward to. I have to find the true spirit of Halloween somehow. Maybe I'll get really drunk and go sit in the pumpkin patch with Linus. \nNo, this year I think I'm going back to my roots for Halloween. I'm going to go back home, open a can of beans, put in a wad of chew, cock my shotgun and wait on the next generation to come by.