It isn’t easy being green, even on Halloween

As I write this, Halloween is still a couple weeks away. I don’t know where you stand on the whole Halloween issue; it seems these days there’s almost nothing you can say about anything that won’t offend somebody. I could write that I like blue skies and some nitwit would claim I’m promoting melanoma and that statistics show gray skies are “safer.”

The same holds true for Halloween. Yes, I know there are folks who consider it an open gateway to Satanism, Paganism, Diabolism and probably a couple other isms I haven’t even heard of. I like to think it’s a chance for kids to have fun and eat too much chocolate.

If you think otherwise, feel free to move on to the sports section now. Larry, our sports editor, is good at his job and there’s a lot of great local coverage there. Read how lousy your local team did Friday night and get mad at Larry instead of me. He’s a sports guy. He can take it. I’m a writer/artist type and therefore too sissified and delicate for that sort of conflict.

Don’t make me hit you to prove it.

At any rate, I’m not trying to promote the Trick or Treat ethos. In fact, this week’s column is a cautionary tale, a warning to youngsters who may become too intensely focused on developing the perfect costume.

My experience in this arena reached its zenith in October of 1964. It was a time when the United States was working overtime to get somebody—anybody—into space, into orbit, and on the moon before the Ruskies did. I was too young to know just why this was important, but I was definitely caught up in the excitement of it all.

Every week I thrilled to the campy thrills of The Outer Limits. My long term goal in life was to be abducted by space aliens. It still is. That may explain the current state of my 401k.

Anyway, I was a space geek. It’s only natural my Halloween costume would reflect this fact.

Now, you have to remember, this was a far-off, primitive age, when kids (at least in my neighborhood) still had to make their own costumes! Kids from good families got their mothers to make ‘em; kids from bad families cut two holes in a pillow case and called it good.

I came from a good family, so mom pitched in.

When I told her I wanted to trick or treat as a Martian, she immediately set about designing a costume that would make Rod Serling proud. She sewed shiny, silver fabric into a Martian-esque tunic, located some pre-cursor to “moon boots,” and even fashioned a pair of antennae from coat hangers and aluminum foil. (Everyone knows Martians have antennae, right?)

I slicked my hair back in a menacing fashion and voila, a Martian was born.

Only problem? Martians, as everyone also knows, are green. I was not, at least by nature.

I lobbied for green spray paint, preferably with metal flake, like I used on my model cars. My mother, no doubt picturing long afternoons removing it with a bucket of turpentine soaked rags, vetoed that idea.

In the end we opted for food coloring. Several bottles of it turned the water in the bathtub the appropriate shade of green. I soaked my skinny body—making sure to submerge my head until my lungs gave out—for about a half-hour. When I finally climbed, dripping wet and pruny, from that tub, I could have passed as a Martian in any club the Jetsons frequented.

At school, my costume won first prize. It was one of the proudest moments of my life.

Less proud was the day after Halloween, when I tried to wash off the green. I tried soap. I tried cold cream. My mother tried kerosene, baby oil and several products designed, I think, for removing rust from mailbox posts.

Nothing worked. I was still a little green on Thanksgiving. By Christmas, I was an Earthling again.

I was glad to be pink, I guess. But a part of me, to this day, still misses being a Martian.

Missed a week? More “Reality Check” online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.