Dear Friend,

Halloween is usually my least favorite holiday. I enjoy the overabundance of twizzlers, yes, but when I am expected to wear a ridiculous costume and then be judged upon my creativity… I fall out of love, quickly. If you didn’t know, I have been spending this semester (and will continue doing so for the rest of the year) in a suite with three of my best friends Morgan, Lenore, and Alyssa. The reason I bring this up is because we like doing silly things, and this includes getting all dressed up for Halloween… something I didn’t realize until yesterday when Alyssa burst into the room and said… “I figured out what we’re going to be for Halloween!!!” My initial reaction was fear, anticipation of humility, and confusion… lots of confusion. I just have a bad history with Halloween costumes… I have gone as all sorts of things, in elementary I had to have a costume for the “parade” we would do through all of the school… I went at little red riding hood, a princess, an african woman (complete with a basket on my head)…one year, the only time I dressed up in middle school, I went as a selkie and everyone thought I had lost my marbles of something… since then, I have avoided costumes at all cost. Until tonight.

I must say, I actually really liked our group costume… we went as the famous quartet… Rock, Paper, Scissors, Shoot. I was “rock.” After taking tons of pictures on Morgan’s camera, we all headed down to the Masquerade Dance… The dance kinda (as in REALLY) sucked. The music choice was horrible… at one point the guy running the music was all “I’m gonna play a crazy song next, so you all should go crazy too!” only to play a relatively slow, hip-hop song that no one has ever heard of before… LAME. Let’s just say that it didn’t take too long before our game decided to play else-where. And by play, I mean return to our suite (with some of our friends) and have our own dance party… complete with a strobe-light, and a much better selection of music. The only downside (and I do mean ONLY) was that we didn’t get to take part in the costume competition. Which, by the way, we would have at least placed in.

In short, this year has renewed my interest in the possibility of dressing up voluntarily, maybe… it depends on what I can find. Who knows, maybe next year I’ll be rocking the half-masks and feathers…

Lots of Love, Mandi Jo