Halloween Again!

Halloween has come and gone, with not-so-many trick-or-treaters, but we still managed to hand out eight or so bags of candy plus a Costco box of Cracker Jacks. Here are some assorted princesses, Queen Elizabeth I, a sorceress, and a character from Little House on the Prairie. I do love Halloween, which is, at least as I celebrated it as a child, totally about imagination with no religious hoo-hah (although it's been pointed out to me that there are indeed religious implications: just not in my experience as a little kid: it was all for kids as I experienced it, with no subtexts except fun.) And we didn't start collecting for UNICEF until I was already into the holiday in a big way. You get to be excitingly bad-- a pirate, a sexy gypsy, a convict. For fourth grade, my mother painted a rubber ball black for me and chained it to my leg. I wore striped pajamas someone had given her and my father. An ugly mask, and I remember the wierdness of people not recognizing me. It was a heady, frightening sensation. And who is this? And why didn't they realize I was missing?