Yesterday, I experienced 30 seconds of sheer bliss during a
“Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” commercial. This half-minute of
drug-dealing, drive-by decadence mesmerized my inner gangsta. Soon
enough, the commercial ended and I paused for reflection. Damn,
back in the day, a mustachioed plumber stomping turtles was all
that I needed from a videogame. Yes, the times they are
a-changin’–take Halloween for example.

I love college Halloween parties as much as the next guy, but
there isn’t enough Everclear-spiked “Bat Juice” in the world to
recapture my childhood memories. Dressing as one half of the
Ambiguously Gay Duo (yeah, that was me) was fun freshman year, as
was a stabbing from a plastic pitchfork after telling a sultry
angel-devil pair that I wanted to see Heaven and Hell back in my
dorm room. But running around my neighborhood, after dark, on a
divine mandate to snag as many sweets as possible before 9 p.m.?
That, my friends, was the stuff of legend.

Complete strangers were evaluated solely on the quality of candy
housed in their homes. The country-club crowd sat firmly atop every
kid’s list, offering king size candy bars for anyone who survived a
game of human “Frogger” across a two-lane street teeming with the
town’s Bat Juiced.

Almost everyone else dispensed the standard-issue Fun Size bars,
but even among the masses, variations occurred. Newlywed husbands
were particularly generous: perhaps they saw nothing “fun” about
the inevitable Butterfinger bomb that would someday obliterate
their wives’ shapely physiques.

Old people usually sucked. They’d inevitably ask why nobody
dressed as Howdy Doody or the Lone Ranger this year, then bestow
tooth-chipping toffees unfit for the lowliest mongrel. We always
came back though–even at 10, we knew those folks thrived upon the
sweetness of youth.

The grayhairs may have been stingy and/or slightly senile, but
they got a free pass anyway. Kids weren’t nearly as forgiving to
health nuts, diabetics or–worst of all–fundamentalists. How
people could live with themselves after granting granola bars was
beyond me. Then again, a few more granola bars, a few less Mars
bars, and perhaps I wouldn’t have filled out my Superman costume
with Superboobs.

Bigger kids always made Halloween interesting. They cornered
unsuspecting lads between houses and subjected us to the full force
of their extensive knowledge of vulgarity. On one occasion, I was
asked if I was a lesbian and told to answer affirmatively or face a
beating. No doubt, that young man matured to a lucrative career in
the fast-food industry, with ample tax relief for his
employers.

Football costumes worn by these wily veterans always pissed me
off–those peckers always double-dipped houses. Not only was the
outfit bland: With a simple helmet removal, one could return in
line and collect a second time. Still, I always felt sorry for the
mutant manchildren who grew thicker facial hair in junior high than
I will in grad school. They needed the helmet so they wouldn’t be
told to get the hell off the porch.

In the blink of an eye, my costumed, candy-collecting days were
soon over. Dad surely missed my companionship… until he chained
me to the front door and forced me to pass out sweets to the next
generation. High school was excruciating–too cool for
trick-or-treat and too young for drink-and-dance.

College resurrected the old Halloween excitement, with dicey
propositions of tricks and treats from foxy French Maids.
Unfortunately, even mack-daddy extraordinaire Don Juan de Butler
doesn’t bat 1.000. On those rare nights of seasonal disappointment,
I’d sell my soul for one more romp in the dark behind my father’s
flashlight, Superboobs and all.