| Straight
from the holler.
by "Buck" November 1, 2006 I’m penning this update on Halloween and watching the Today Show. Somewhere along the line, I didn’t get the memo that adults are also dress-up freaks on Halloween. I remember as a kid, I’d dress up in some sort of ridiculous get-up…usually homemade. I recall from my youngest years being a fireman, a policeman, a cowboy, a ghost, and a vampire. After that, my mother started to step away and allow my youthful imagination to take over. Generally it became me dressed up in an overcoat, with a coating of Bisquick in my hair, flour on my face, and ketchup dribbling down from my eyes. A makeup artist I ain’t—thank you very much. However, this foolishness left me at about age 12. From there I was content to ride around in regular clothes and destroy mailboxes, smash pumpkins, or roll a teacher’s home with toilet paper. Then I headed off to college. I continued to maintain a stance of no costumes—but there were others, especially coeds who were all into the Halloween theme at the bars. I recall 99 percent of ladies would dress up as Playboy bunnies. I’m told at other universities, like Ohio State, things really got out of hand. People were dressed up there as tampons or man-sized condoms…crazy stuff. Okay all of this I can buy since you’re in college, you’re drunk, what the hell? However, when did it become fashionable for supposed “grown ups” to dress up for Halloween? I mean seriously, 47-year old tax attorney dressed up as a can of Playdough? Come the hell on people!!! I sit in a lawn chair on my porch handing candy to these gremlins every year and their PARENTS are also dressed up wanting candy!!! To paraphrase Jeff Kay….what in the caramel coated hell is that all about? I refuse to give candy to the adults, which almost always results in steely eyed looks and glassy exchanges. However, I dare them to try some shit. I will kick their ass—whether they’re dressed as the Incredible Hulk or not. This may come as a shock to many of you, who’ve come to know me well, but I’m NOT hip to pop culture and do NOT do the Halloween dress up thing. It has led me to start thinking however, how do I want to die? I mean really, there are millions of ways to check out---but there are some that just don’t excite me. I really have no desire to die by way of a fire. That’s got to be just about the worst horror of them all. Drowning would also be very uncool, simply because of the sheer terror you’d have to endure in the final moments. When I was young, I always figured I’d die in a car wreck. If I wasn’t driving like a maniac, I was usually riding with somebody who was. I guess a car wreck would do, as long as there was no fire, but I’d want something spectacular like rollovers with parts and shit flying everywhere. If you have to go, check out in a crash they’ll be talking about from now on. You know all my buddies would be visiting the junk yard to see what’s left of the car. Along those same lines, getting hit by a car wouldn’t interest me since you’d look like a complete dumbass flying through the air like a rag doll….what’s more, there’s a possibility they’d save your ass and you’d be all curled up drinking Ensure as a meal for life and soiling yourself—and I just couldn’t have that. A good hanging leaves quite a legacy—but most of the time it’s a legacy that you’re a fruitcake since there aren’t many accidental hangings. Every year in a college town you’ll have one or two guys hanging naked over a pile of pornography. That’s not my idea of a great legacy. For some reason these guys are always oriental—what’s up with that? Carbon monoxide poisoning would be a pretty good way to check out—since all you do is go to sleep and that’s it. Being shot or stabbed is somewhat appealing. On the one hand—it might make it look like you put up a good fight—or not. On the other hand, you could survive, change the details, and then show off the scars when you’re drunk and have a GREAT barroom story. Growing up on the farm another way I figured I’d go was in a heavy machinery accident. I was forever working in an unsafe manner around all kinds of moving parts. I’ve even had a few close calls. I once had a pair of overalls ripped from my body when the leg got caught in the belt drive of a hay baler. The only drawback to these is that you usually don’t die in them—you wind up getting an appendage whacked off—and that’s never good. Then there’s electrocution, lightning strikes, crushed by a boulder, falling from a high cliff, being impaled on a piece of rebar, smothered in a horrible folding couch incident—I know I’ve only begun to scratch the surface here. Perhaps today you could add a few of your own in the comments section. Buck Out |
