on halloween and how it factors into my nightmares

every year at midsummer, i throw a yard game decathlon party for family and friends. on account of a successful combination of hefeweizen, kansas city burnt ends, house music, and kubb for the 4th annual tournament (2008), my parents later informed me that it was one of the top five parties that they had ever attended. obviously, this made me curious about what else was on their list:

• one of them was some idiot’s ridiculously overplanned wedding reception that did not at all go according to plan.
• one was a party in greece that they were erroneously invited to because my dad was accidentally wearing the colours of the local football team.
• their number two party involved game 6 of the 1980 world series and several thousand old city carousers.

all and all, it was a pretty tame list so i was eager to hear what they chose as their number one. it turned out that it was a halloween party WHICH THEY THREW. now wait just a second, i thought, one can’t put one’s own party on the list of all-time best parties—it’s poor decorum.

not so, argued my parents. it was a marvelous party: trick-or-drinking, bobbing for apples, animatronic zombies, and outlandish costumes—my mom had dressed up as wonderwoman and my dad was sherlock holmes.

“still,” i said, “it sounds kinda lame.”

“no,” they said, “it was spectacular. in fact, it was so spectacular that it was—as near as we can calculate—the night that you were conceived.”

so now, not only am i acutely aware of the circumstance in which my dad planted the candy coated seed that would later become yours truly—but i have an unshakable mental image of he (wearing nothing but a deerstalker hat) and my mom (clad in a glittering tiara and a skimpy leotard) having freaky cosplay sex with the savage furor of pagan gods. this is how halloween factors into my nightmares.