A Halloween Story of BILE.

Due to some fundamental flaw in the American education system, going to college did not immediately land me a job.

For this reason, I have spent the last month or so working at a local Halloween store. You know the kind of place I'm talking about; it's a little empty space in a strip mall with a ton of cheap yet ridiculously expensive costumes hung all over the place with the Monster Mash playing on repeat all goddamn day. It is a pretty simple gig, since all I ever really do is open and sort boxes of costumes or stand behind a cash register. I like being surrounded by costumes and some spooky music for hours at a time, and there are plenty of nearby stores to supplant my need for obscene amounts of caffeine to finish the shift, having slept only 3 hours the night before. It's a pretty fun little job, really.

However, something that has become apparent (and disturbing) to me over the course of this month is the views that people who come into the store have on originality when it comes to the holiday. To say it with the utmost geezerness... when I was a kid my mother always helped me to make a costume for Halloween. I always thought it was really cool to make what I was going to wear rather than shelling out for a cheaply made foam-and-plastic suit. This also could have just meant that we were poor, but kids never know that kind of thing. Even complex trademarked characters were attempted with the most spectacular of failures resulting, but they were still pretty awesome. Today, it seems that children and adults alike are terrified of having anything but the licensed, store-bought items necessary to efficiently browbeat other partygoers with "who/ what they are supposed to be".

The first person that really made me think about this was a customer who showed up at the counter witht a sixty dollar Teletubby costume (it was Dipsy, if you're interested). It is not in my job description to pass judgement on taste, so I thought nothing of it. But then then he said to me, in a tone which I can only describe as braggadocious: "Yeah, I always outdo myself every year. My costumes just keep getting better; my friends always like, freak out when I show up." This guy was simply buying something more expensive every year and somehow making it into a personal statement about how committed he was to the holiday and impressing his friends at parties. I asked what alterations he was planning to make to the costume, giving him the benefit of the doubt and hoping he was going to at least bloody the thing up, but he looked at me like I was insane.

Another girl came in today to put together a Family Guy character outfit. I directed her to the right things but suggested that, as this would certainly be popular, she could stand out from the pack by wearing a little alternate outfit from a specific episode. She loved the idea. We chatted excitedly about how to make it work. Then she called her boyfriend to ask about part of it, and I hear her say "...yeah... how are people not gonna know who I am? It's great... who cares if they don't get it?" Her boyfriend was actually concerned that people might not immediately catch the reference, and this is something he should WARN her about? I know we Americans have a reputation for being less than genius but I find it incredibly sad that something like a slightly less-than-mainstream Halloween costume can incite social anxiety in someone.

That girl was awesome. She didn't care and she went off with full intent to make the idea happen. I've never been so happy to blow a sale.