If you’ve waited until this month to start your Halloween shopping, you are way behind.
Way. Behind.
Halloween stuff starts showing up in stores before the back-to-school merchandise goes on clearance. If you haven’t been Halloween shopping, you are missing out, my friend.
Take, for example, pet supply stores. What’s your guinea pig going to be for Halloween this year? Get that panicked look off your face. You have options – lots of them.
I don’t have a guinea pig, but I am thinking about getting one, just so I can dress it up as a unicorn for Halloween. I better get on it, too, because pet Halloween costumes are completely picked over after the first week of October. If you have a big dog, you better plan to buy online.
The pet Halloween market is exploding. Even fish can get in on the action. They make jack-o-lanterns for aquariums now, and spooky skeletons that light up.
We humans are hardly left out of this spooky, kooky fabulousness. Costumes have come a long way. Kids can dress up like Darth Vader, with a full helmet and real, menacing-looking, black Vader suit. I don’t think they even made “Star Wars” costumes when I was a kid but, if they did, the masks were one-dimensional,plastic things with eyes and a miniscule air-hole cut-out. Every so often, you’d have to duck behind a tree, pull off your mask and breathe for a few minutes.
The garment part of the costumes was made of flammable fabric, with whatever look you were going for printed on the front. The whole costume happened in the front. Head-on, you were a terrifying skeleton. Anyone walking behind you just saw a kid with an elastic band around his head, wearing an odd-fitting jumper.
I hope I don’t sound bitter. I like progress. I guess, you could say, I am in awe.
The problem I really have with Halloween is how long it goes on. You can start stocking up on candy a solid two months beforehand. You almost have to buy candy early, or you end up handing out dark chocolate and Certs. You don’t want to be that house. Trust me.
If I seem unreasonably annoyed about buying candy early, let me just explain something. If I buy Halloween candy four weeks before the holiday, I’ll eat it all within a week. You might suggest I simply buy candy I don’t like – it doesn’t work. I’ll eat it anyway. I don’t know why it happens. It’s psychological.
I’ve started keeping extra dog treats handy, because some people have started bringing pets trick-or-treating with them. It’s not that hard to keep a stash of Snausages around. I am not in jeopardy of eating those before Halloween – I think I’m not.
The big question is, what should I keep on hand for the trick-or-treating guinea pigs? It’s only a matter of time.
