31/10/2002 - 4:08 p.m.

Mary, Mary Calhaine

It's been an eventful day.

First of all, Happy Samhain, All Hollow's Eve, Hallowe'en, or Halloween, whatever your preference.

You know, in my day, my mother made my little brother and I genuinely scary costumes. OK, there were Ernie and Big Bird when I was two, but that was different. But from the time I was three, I was a ghost (and not just a sheet with holes cut in, nope, an actual face made with black transparent fabric like they use for professional costumes that aren't supposed to show your face- actually, it sorta resembles a Ku Klux Klan mask, but we won't go there), a jack o lantern, a witch (modelled exactly after the Margaret Hamilton from The Wizard of Oz), and scarecrow (again, modelled after The Wizard of Oz). My brother was a bat and a soldier and a ghost. All of the costumes, excepting the witch and soldier, were large enough that they were reusable. I could still wear all of those costume's pieces if I so desired. The witch dress is far too small, but the hat fits.

We did none of these fairy princesses striped with reflective tape, or plastic sworded Power Rangers. We were traditionally scary things, not just things that terrify you when you open the door and see that Winnie the Pooh and his little sister Snow White have come to beg. That's still terrifying, but not in the traditional trick-or-treating fashion.

And you know, no one knows what you mean when you say "trick". Around here, you have to work to get a joke out of the kid. They just think they can knock on the door and demand candy at no expense to themselves. Excuse me, but a trick is necessary, my little pretties.

Anyone game to sit in a pumpkin patch with me?

Other than that, I have decided to become a Cavorter. I've been wrestling with myself on this one for a while, but I decided to take the plunge today because, I mean, a day 'specially for Cavorting? "We need this in our lives."

So, I'm going to Saturday's rehearsal for Fiddler. I hope it's good. They keep telling us that after we've seen college theatre, high school productions are completely different. I don't want it to be that way.

I'm still on a Pippin kick. It's beginning to annoy me, because I've not focused on anything else since I've gotten it. I should just turn it off and say no, but the songs are so apt.

Anybody wanting to know what it takes to scare me, the title is an old Irish "ghost" story that terrified me so much as a child that all my dad had to do was say her name the same way the storyteller I heard had done and I would burst into tears. I have been unable to find the story as I had heard it, but there are versions to be found. I don't think they're as good as what I remember.