Written by Jasey Roberts
How is it possible for it to already be the season of pumpkin spice and everything nice? So soon? Where has the time gone? It seems both like yesterday and like decades ago that I was writing an article about how it’s March and we have our whole lives ahead of us and what’s the deal with this COVID-19 thing, anyway? I’ve been informed that a good friend of mine, BA section editor Zach Dalton, is also writing an article about Halloween costumes, so instead of focusing on specific costume ideas which I was never very good at anyway (last year my girlfriend and I donned bathrobes, spray painted our hair gray, got matching ironic coffee mugs and called ourselves a boomer couple), I’m going to instead pen a short plea about Halloween to my fellow students, both on-campus and off.
You know how you have a body, right? One that’s capable of moving and eating and wearing clothes? Clothes, like, say, a sexy bumblebee costume, or a bedsheet with eyeholes, or if you’re boring a bathrobe? You know how everyone around you has a very similar body that is also capable of moving and eating and doing all of those incredible things? Well, part of the fun of Halloween is we get to remind ourselves that ghosts, skeletons, and zombies are scary. We are scared of these things because there’s a very strong likelihood that we might become one of them someday. These bodies we have are, to quote the bard, “mortal and unsure.” Despite our amazing capabilities, we have surprisingly (sometimes hilariously) little control of our faculties. See, anxiety, addiction, raging indigestion and, most notably now, COVID-19. It’s the old human condition at play: we can fashion wings for ourselves and soar over the sea. But plopping into the ocean – nature doing what it does – is always the alternative. So when you get to wear your wings next Saturday night – be them that of a sexy angel or sexy Tinkerbell or a sexy what-have-you – please do so over Zoom, or with friends that you’ve isolated with, or, if you can’t help yourself, with friends who are all wearing masks. Human bodies, no matter how strong or resilient you think yours is, are susceptible to things that you’d never expect. And yours just so happens to be inextricably linked to you, for life! How fun!
Happy Halloween!
