Not My Favorite Holiday

I never got really excited about Halloween as a kid. The thought of having to get all costumed up and knock on people's doors in the dark to ask for candy never appealed to me. First of all, I was never a fan of candy. It's not that my parents were health nuts and wouldn't let me have candy, I just didn't care for it. Desserts, such as pie and ice cream, were much more up my alley. If someone was handing out French silk pies to trick-or-treaters, not only would I have slapped on a Mr. T mohawk and knocked on their door, I would've asked them to adopt me. Secondly, I wasn't a naive kid. I knew that there were weirdos out there who had the potential to do some weird/dangerous stuff to the candy they were giving out. Our neighbor, for instance, was a physicist who would periodically have all of his physicist buddies come over to get drunk and talk about physics as loudly as possible (by the age of 11 I had heard enough alcohol-induced physics arguments to get at least a C- on a college-level physics exam). No way am I taking candy from those guys.

I did go to Halloween parties at school, though. It was fun just to run around with my friends and play all the games (even though candy was the only prize). Except for "bobbing for apples." Again, I wasn't a naive kid. I understood the concept of germs. If I wanted to basically open-mouth kiss all the kids in my school, I'd want more than a "red delicious" apple for my trouble. Those are the worst kind of apples.
I could even be persuaded to put on a costume for those parties. I never cared what it was so I let my parents pick it out for me, which led to some pretty weird results. One year, I showed up to the party as Rush Limbaugh. I didn't even know who that was but my parents thought it was the funniest thing in the world. They had me put on a suit, put a pillow in my shirt, and slick my hair back. My dad even pinned a dollar bill in the shape of one of those AIDS ribbons to my suit jacket. The hilarity was lost on me and my friends but my friends' parents made me pose for roughly 10,000 pictures which took abnormally long because they were laughing too hard to hold their cameras still. The next year I dressed up as a baseball player so I wouldn't be bothered and I could devote all my time to conquering the cardboard box maze.

I even found some ways to enjoy Halloween through high school. One year, me and my friend Seth took the candy we were going to give out up to my parents' roof. When the trick-or-treaters would knock on the door, they were met with a furious hailstorm of candy. The kids loved it. Except for one kid named Stuart. He must have had a previous bad experience with flying candy because he ran out of there screaming like he was having a war flashback. We knew what his name was because his mom went crazy, running down the street hand-in-hand with her son screaming "THEY'RE SHOOTING CANDY AT STUART! THEY'RE SHOOTING CANDY AT STUART!". We thought that was going to keep all the other kids away and we were going to have to wrap it up. Instead, kids' ears turned up and they showed up like vultures to a water buffalo carcass. Our "clientele" doubled.

All that said, have a safe and happy Halloween and if you come across anybody giving out French silk pies, I need to be notified.


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Staying in America From Now On

I usually travel pretty well. I can sit in a plane, car, or train for hours and thoroughly enjoy every minute of it. This has been true since the day I was born. My parents and I used to make the 9 hour trek up to northern Minnesota to visit relatives every year and I would sit in the back, silently contemplating the deep mysteries of existence and looking forward to the day when I would be able to read what all the road signs said. I'm fairly certain my parents had this exchange more than once:

Dad: "Christopher hasn't made a sound in 6 hours. Take a look back there and make sure he's okay."
 (Mom turns around and we make eye contact. I raise my "sippy" cup toward her in a gesture that says, "Yep. Still here. Now turn around and let me resume my nose-picking in peace.")
Mom: "He's fine. The weirdest kid ever, but fine."

This personality trait has served me well over the course of my life. I've traveled to quite a few different countries and have always enjoyed the long flights. I've even enjoyed the ridiculously long layovers in overcrowded airports (At an especially long layover at the Incheon International airport in Seoul, South Korea for instance, I parked myself on a chair that had a great view of the entrance and exit to that horizontal escalator thing that all airports have. More people have trouble getting on and off those things than you might think. The hours just flew by). I've sat in a car and driven through Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska without wanting to fling myself out of the car just to escape the boredom. The only time I've had any traveling issues came as a result of my big mouth.

The year after I graduated from high school I went on a spontaneous road trip with my friends, Grant and Jon. We decided to pack some clothes and toiletries and just start driving. And that's exactly what we did. We started driving east and ended up going into Canada at Niagara Falls, where we encountered a very strange Canadian border patrolman:

Canuck: "What's the purpose of your visit to Canada?"
Grant: "We've never been to Canada and thought we'd check it out."
Canuck: "You've never been to Canada?"
Grant: "Nope."
Canuck (now strangely angry and red in the face): "YOU'VE NEVER BEEN TO CANADA?!!?"

Anyway, we spent a few days making our way through Toronto (probably the most beautiful city I've ever seen), Ottawa, and Montreal and decided to re-enter the US in eastern Maine. It was late at night, possibly very early morning, when we came to the border crossing. We were extremely tired and I was not handling it well. You know when you're overly tired and everything makes you laugh as hard as you do when you see a video montage of old people losing their balance on America's Funniest Home Videos? That's how I was that night. We pulled up to the border patrol station and a soldier with a machine gun slung over his back took our passports and began grilling us with questions. Most of the questions revolved around where we worked and it was obvious he was suspicious of us doing a late-night drug run. The air was thick with tension and Grant and Jon were obviously nervous. My sleep-deprived delirium did not allow me to be nervous, leading to this exchange:

Soldier: "What are the chances, if I searched your car, of finding drugs, weapons, or other illegal paraphernalia?"
Me (leaning from the passenger seat to the driver's side window): "Oh jeez. I don't know. I'd say slim to none."

Slim to none?!!? The soldier's eyes instantly widened and he turned his back, speaking into his radio. Grant and Jon were furiously apologizing on behalf of their momentarily deranged friend as other soldiers appeared, guns no longer confined to their backs. One of them searched underneath the car while another one came to my window, asking what kind of drugs they had a "slim to none" chance of finding. I'm pretty sure a german shepherd was sniffing around as well. After not finding anything, the soldiers came to the conclusion that Grant and Jon were making a seemingly good point about their idiot friend and decided to let us go.

As we pulled away, Grant turned to Jon and said, "What are the chances we let Chris talk to anybody else on this trip?"

Jon replied, "I'd say slim to none."


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