Warding off Halloween’s he- and she-devils

Halloween is just days away, so I figured, why not celebrate another family quirk?

As a… Halloween is just days away, so I figured, why not celebrate another family quirk?

As a child, I was not permitted to celebrate Halloween. That’s right – no costumes, no trick-or-treating, no pumpkin carving.

Instead, when I knew there would be an in-class party, I was sent to school with a note that excused me from the festivities and banished me to the library. There I would spend the afternoon reading Clifford books with the Jehovah’s Witness twins who were also not allowed to join in the fun.

I could picture the little sinners back in the classroom moving the desks and leaping around the room in a devil-possessed frenzy. Obviously, whatever they were doing had to be borderline illegal.

On the evenings of trick-or-treat, my parents would turn off the front porch light. However, a few miniature-sized ghosts or witches would climb the steps and knock on the door, seeking just a couple of pieces of candy.

As my dad would open the door and turn the children away, I would peek at them around his leg, curious as to whether the little heathens were hiding red eyes beneath that mask or if they had horns tucked up under that pointed hat.

This is not a sob story I’m feeding you. I didn’t curl up in a corner and cry every night. I never missed celebrating Halloween because I never had.

My parents eventually loosened up and allowed me to celebrate the holiday at the age of 13. I chose to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The next year, I was Mia Hamm.

OK, so maybe I haven’t made the best costume decisions in my life, but I didn’t have all the years of experience that everyone else did.

Nonetheless, I never quite found the fun in Halloween. Overdosing on sugar at my best friend’s house was more fun than having to collect the candy myself by begging door-to-door. To me that’s pretty much the equivalent of taking a shopping cart and collecting aluminum cans at the football tailgates.

And then there’s this whole business of haunted houses. And hayrides, and hoedowns and any other seemingly fun recreational event that twisted people take delight in turning into the creepiest experience ever.

I went on my first haunted hayride during my senior year of high school. When some football player dressed as a psychotic bum jumped on my bale of hay and proceeded to try to pull me off by my leg, I’m pretty certain that I broke his nose by kicking him in the face repeatedly with my free leg.

Once the tractor came to a complete stop, I ran through the haunted cornfield like a bat out of hell, screaming the entire time. I don’t think I even once saw anyone jump out at me. I even avoided the man with the chainsaw. It didn’t matter that I didn’t see anybody – being scared is not fun.

Like Dr. R. L. Hymers, Jr., said in his sermon preached at the Baptist Tabernacle of Los Angeles on October 20, 2002, titled “I Hate Halloween”:

“Don’t see “The Ring” either, unless you want to possibly become demon-possessed.”

Just kidding. I’m not that crazy.

There are tons of people who get a kick out of being terrified. I’m just not one of them. In fact, during the previews for “The Ring Two,” I jumped and threw my nachos. And if there’s one thing I detest, it’s wasting good food.

Maybe I’m just a big scaredy-cat because I wasn’t raised with Halloween. I never got a chance to become desensitized like kids these days. Last year when I lived in Pennsylvania Hall, each floor made a scary haunted house and local kids went through them. After they told all of us we were stupid, it wasn’t difficult to realize I wasn’t missing that much.

But on the opposite spectrum, people do fear some really odd things. According to Phobia-Fear-Release.com, more people have emetophobia (the fear of vomit) than carcinophobia (the fear of cancer). In fact, they fall into the number seven and eight positions respectively on the top 10 list of phobias. Living here at college and surveying Oakland grounds on a Thursday night, I never would have thought.

Now, “The Exorcist” and its unnecessary amounts of projectile vomiting kind of turned me off, too. But, honestly, can’t you think of a more legitimate fear than that?

Ultimately, when it comes to Halloween I enjoy carving pumpkins, picking out wholesome costumes and jumping in large piles of leaves. None of that scary stuff for me. And so help me – if you sneak up on me this Halloween I may go Linda Blair on you.

On mischief night, Jessica Popovich has plans to stick up a Foot Locker for a referee costume, because either way she’ll end up in stripes. E-mail Jessica while you still have the chance at jrp32@pitt.edu.