Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

All Saint’s Day. All Hallows.  All Hallows’ Evening. Hallows Even. Hallowe’en. Halloween.

Not my favorite…well, you can’t really call it a holiday…not my favorite festival. Not even my second favorite. To be honest, my least favorite, which is to say, I really dislike it. A lot.

Growing up, it was just another example of social stratification, another peer-review spotlight that illuminated my inner nerd. You must understand that, back then, at that age, carrying a violin to school on a regular basis did considerable damage to one’s street cred. So did liking to read. Wearing glasses didn’t help. Neither did being sports-deficient. So, being a scrawny, gawky, four-eyed kid who walked to school, a violin in one hand, while reading a book with the other…it pretty much guaranteed that I was going to peg the lower end on the Cool Scale.

Halloween just rubbed it in.

There was only one time where Halloween and I got along. One night. In college.

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