I guess people just aren’t into celebrating Halloween much anymore. I was participating in a sort of photo-scavenger hunt at Ecstasy MB and I was rather distressed to find out that I had no opportunity for photos at all! The participating members of the boards were broken into two teams and each team had to find a person dressed in costume as:

• Pirate
• Angel
• Zombie
• Politician
• Superhero
• Animal
• Maid
• Rockstar
• Nurse or Doctor
• Convict
• and Vampire

On top of that we also had to find people in costumes that were separate from the aformentioned and represented one of the following words:

• Scary
• Sexy
• Wacky
• Creative
• Cheap
• Hairy
• Humorous
• Whimsical
• Mysterious
• Gothic
• Bizarre

In years past I recall seeing workers at grocery stores and even department stores dressed up and showing their Halloween spirit. I expected that when I went out yesterday to take advantage of an awesome sale on pork roast (I’m making posole) that I would be presented with a few people in costume. I was dead wrong. I thought for sure I’d see a sales worker at Albertson’s dressed as a witch, catgirl, vampire, and maybe somebody would do something like a clown or with a lot of glitter. You know, something that was in the spirit but was clearly made with whatever odds and ends they could find. I thought for sure I’d find at least one on the list. I found not a one. The closest any of the workers got to dressing up was an orange pin on their vests and aprons that read “Happy Halloween from Everyone at Albertson’s” and had a black cat on it.

There was an older woman in front of me in line that must have been wondering the same thing as me because she asked how come no workers were dressed up this year. Apparently the manager forbid it. Well, shit. I ended up taking a slight detour to Wal-Mart after I got out of there because people are always dressed odd there. Right? Actually, the only people I saw dressed up at Wal-Mart were kids and I wasn’t going to take pictures of little kids. I could just envision the lynch mob that would have formed when parents saw me taking pics of their kids. Scary thought that.

So after scouting Wal-Mart out for about half an hour I abandoned my false interest in a jar of eye cream I had picked up at random and left. Yesterday evening I did get some trick-or-treaters and I asked if I could take a picture of the kids because their costumes were so cute. And really, the little girl dressed as a fairy queen was precious and got extra candy, but the Mom with ‘em vetoed that idea and gave me a strange look. I quickly changed the subject and asked about the costume. Was it home made (it was) and how long did it take? Sort of things. Thankfully the woman chalked up my desire for a picture as a shared interest in sewing and crafts.

Hope my team doesn’t lynch me for the no pics thing. I tried, I really did.

I hope everyone else had an awesome Halloween though! Mine was filled with shopping, cooking, candy, trick-or-treaters, and scary movies.