This is Halloween.

Here I am, sitting on my leather sofa, waiting for someone to show up at my house. The best part about living on a dead-end street is, you get a lot of free time. Which is also rather depressing, when I think about it.

Y'see, I love Halloween. After all, Halloween is the night when the creepy-crawlies come to play. Halloween is the night when you get to see who people really are. After all, when everyone's wearing a mask, nobody has anything to hide. Think about it    what are the two things that Halloween is known for? Unprovoked vandalism, and going up to the houses of random people, demanding candy and we don't even question it. Truly, the costume is the most powerful of shields. After all, it protects us, not from physical harm, that's child's play. Physical harm is easy to defend against, it happens and exists solely in the present. No, the mask, the costume, the disguise, protects us from something so much more immaterial, so much more dangerous; It protects us from consequence, from the future, from age itself. People say that the tradition of dressing up for Halloween started as people dressing up to frighten away vengeful spirits of those who came before, and I would say that although this may be true, I think it goes deeper than that; the Celts, or the Gaels, or whoever the hell came up with this beautiful holiday, they weren't trying to stave off ghosts and ghouls; No, they were trying to protect themselves from something much worse, much scarier, much more awful.

They were trying to stave off age and death. They were trying to, for one day of the year, capture the youth and innocence they once had. That is why, on this particular holiday, I am not doing homework, like a responsible adult should, I am not worrying about getting a job, or applying for university, or writing essays    I am doing none of that. Instead, I am dressed as a time-traveling, space-exploring, two-hearted alien madman, eating candy, and posting on my blog, which nobody but me reads.

Like I said, when you live on a dead-end street, you get a lot of free time.