COLUMN: "359 Days Until Halloween"

From Jonathan Steinmetz's "Taking the Long Way Home," Fall '92 For those of you who don't recall, the classroom is filled with cutouts of jack o'lanterns and oversized maple leaves tinged that perfect yellow-orange color -- the shade that is, amazingly, so often found in nature itself. Last week, the walls were covered by a montage of witches and goblins, ghosts and monsters. For weeks, the children have been bantering about what they're going to be for Halloween, until the topic is whipped up into a frenzied pitch larger than the Super Bowl. The teachers are hopelessly trying to salvage some educational value from the week. They resort to recounting things like the history of Halloween. Let's face it -- when you're a kid, Halloween is the best night of the year. Halloween is meant for kids. I knew my neighborhood, and I knew the generous people who gave out the "good stuff." I also knew who didn't stay home on Halloween, opting instead to be miserly and mean. I remember the dentist who would give out an apple and a toothbrush, reminding every kid who passed by to brush and floss, while knowing full well that Halloween accounted for half of his business. And, of course, I was aware that my parents should check my bag nine times before I ate any candy, yet I ate half of it before I had even gotten home, ignoring all warnings of razor blades and crazy men like the Tylenol killer. Later, my friends and I would gather to trade candy. I'm sure most future Wharton students did the same. Then, there would be days of lunch boxes filled with candy, until one horrible day, usually around November 2, when my supply ran out. There were Halloween parties, where some kid -- whose mom was petrified of all the loonies in the world poisoning her child -- opted instead to invite all the children over for Halloween revelry like bobbing for apples and telling ghost stories. Then, there was that defining moment in Halloween history when I first got to trick-or-treat without my parents, and could finally stray far from home. But sometime between fifth and seventh grade, it became "uncool" to trick-or-treat. I had hit that rebel stage of life. Actually, that asshole stage of life, when nothing would make me happier than a can of menthol shaving cream and a dozen farm-fresh eggs. I wreaked great havoc on my neighborhood, thinking I was the baddest thing since Michael Jackson. Well, actually Michael Jackson wasn't "Bad" at that point in time, but you get the idea. I can remember burning the tip of the shaving cream hole with a match, so I could have shaving cream that shot out further. When my mom found out, she almost killed me, yelling, "You could have burned the whole house down! That can is flammable!" Hell, I didn't care. My goal for the week was to turn the neighborhood into one giant omelette. Of course, I didn't think it was so hilarious a few years ago when some punk splattered my car with rotten eggs, and I had to spend hours washing and waxing the vehicle. Just goes to prove that what goes around, comes around. Now we're in college. Many of us have reached that stage of life where nothing would make us happier than drinking a jack o'lantern filled with Absolut. We treat Halloween as just another excuse to get drunk and pretend we're somebody we're not, because many of us spend so much of our time doing that anyway. Our biggest concern is that we don't get so plastered that we end up going home with "Pat" from "Saturday Night Live." Still, other students, like the group I saw on the Walk last Thursday, take time out to escort the kids who were trick-or-treating at the different houses on campus. And no, I don't subscribe to the theory that they were doing this to pad their resumes. Alas, many of us will get to experience this whole cycle all over again. Sooner than many of us realize, we will have our own kids to outfit for Halloween. We'll have to convince our kids of things like, "yes, white Glad trash bags really do make you look like a Stormtrooper." "No, even though you're the smallest kid in the second grade, you really can be a convincing football player" -- and "no, you don't look stupid" because the helmet is nine times bigger than your head and belongs to Uncle Paul, who played offensive line for Oklahoma. A few years later, we'll try to prevent our kids from going out and terrorizing the neighborhood. We'll attempt to explain to them that the neighbors who leave their houses empty on Halloween night really aren't bad people deserving of punishment, even though in our hearts we know they are. Finally, we'll become older. We will look forward to Halloween as the one night when young people, other than our grandchildren, actually come to our door and talk to us. It will be a night when children will flock towards us, instead of avoiding us. Of course, we'll know that it's the candy talking, but we will still enjoy seeing the pageantry of Halloween. Finally, we'll be gone and buried, and Halloween will once again become the liveliest night of the year. At least that's what Hollywood says. Jonathan Steinmetz is a Wharton sophomore from West Palm Beach, Florida. "Taking the Long Way Home" appears alternate Fridays.