Halloween from an outsider's perspective

Halloween has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I remember a few costumes from my younger years -- a hobo, punk rocker, Holly Hobby -- but the memories that stand out most clearly are trick-or-treating for hours in a time unmarked by fears of child abduction and the inevitable dentist appointment the next day (evil parenting on my mother's part).

As a mom, I remember my son's first costume (white sweatshirt and sweatpants with "spots" cut out of black felt to make him a cute little Holstein), trick-or-treating in small towns where we knew everyone and gladly taking the discards from the kids' buckets.

It surprised me, then, to hear two visiting journalists in our newsroom discussing an invitation to a Halloween party. The journalists, from Colombia and Algeria, had been invited to a party and the man from Colombia worked to explain to the man from Algeria what Halloween was.

"People dress in funny outfits and the children go to houses in search of candy," was how he put it.

At first I wanted to stand up and say, "No! There's more to it than that! It's a holiday rich in tradition, how can you just dismiss it with a few words?"

Then I thought about it -- what else is it, than a day for people to dress in costume and send their children from door-to-door in search of candy? It's the one day a year we expect neighbors to supply our kids with sweets and, by the same token, we become willing to spend $20 to $50 or more on candy we know we likely won't get to sample ourselves because we're passing it out to the kids who come knocking on our own door.

Sure, there's a long pagan history behind Halloween and, for some, that's an important story to remember.

For most of us, though, Halloween is simply about the chocolate.

Aaah, the irony ...

Over the course of my 40+ years I've learned that life is full of fun little ironies.

When I was in college, I would pull the inevitable all-nighter studying for a test, only to discover the test was the next Wednesday or Tuesday or whatever. I remember sneaking in past curfew in high school to find both my parents sound asleep and then, banking on that happening all the time, intentionally staying out past curfew only to have them both standing at the door when I got home.

This year I've learned -- twice -- that my body is in on the joke, too.

For the second time this year I've broken out in shingles -- a skin and nerve disorder brought on by the same virus that causes chickenpox. A person can't "catch" shingles -- the virus lays dormant in your body and some people get it and some don't.

So who gets it, and why me?

Shingles is most common in adults over the age of 60 (that's not me), cancer patients (not me, either) or those who are under stress (oh, there I am).

Now, here's the kicker: shingles is caused by stress. It causes such nerve pain that I stayed home from work for two days last week -- both deadline days, no less -- because the thought of driving 30 miles and sitting in an office without a heating pad was not an appealing one. Staying home from work and potentially missing deadline causes me stress.

See the problem?

Life is just so funny.

What did we expect?

I've been really nervous the last few weeks. Once talk started centering around "recession" and "bailout" and the Dow started dropping, and dropping -- I got jittery. Things can get pretty hairy around here already without the economy taking a nosedive.

Then I got to thinking. Really thinking. Had we been paying attention we probably could have seen this -- all of this -- coming.

I'm not a prophet by any stretch of the imagination, nor am I an economist. Hell, I didn't even take economics in college (which could explain the state of my own checkbook, but that's another blog post). But I am an adult, I have lived as a married woman and as a single mother and have participated in the free marketplace as both. When I took a sabbatical from writing six years ago and sold real estate, I got to be on the other side of the market and started noticing things I hadn't paid much attention to before.

People who had no business buying houses were buying houses. Banks were authorizing people to spend way more than they could afford, and real estate agents were swaying their clients to the higher end of their authorization. Mortgage rates at that time were at 5 percent and lower, and mortgage lenders began offering 100 percent loans.

I remember telling my business partner at the time that in 5 to 10 years we would start seeing a lot of the houses we were showing and selling -- particularly those to clients who insisted on the 100 percent loan -- back on the market. Right after the bank foreclosed.

Then I started looking around me and seeing what was happening. We -- a collective we, being my friends, neighbors, coworkers, colleagues and people I don't even know -- have this need to be constantly updated. We drive our cars until the loan is paid, then we get a different one. We job-hop until we've tried everything. Our cell phones are exchanged for newer, bigger, more complex models all the time -- and do far more than allow us to just talk to someone in another building or city. We can email, watch television or videos, get news updates sent to us -- all on our phone.

Americans buy because we can. The idea of "needing" something has become so abstract, I'm not sure many people could actually identify a "need" vs. a "want" if asked.

So while it scares the living hell out of me, maybe this mess is a wake-up call we so badly need. Something to say, "Enough. Get back to basics, people. While you still can."