Ahh, Oct. 31. How I love the smell of face paint in the evening. The sight of whirling dervishes of dead brown leaves swirling in the wind under a big cloudy sky. The taste of the sugary traces of candy still left on my lips. The feel of cobblestones under my feet at Fell's Point. The smell of drunken strangers' breath in my face - demanding to know what my costume is. Okay, not so much the drunken strangers one. But it is an indisputable characteristic of Halloween in college and especially so in college in Baltimore where no holiday is complete without a drunken wino/ student getting in your face. Lord knows you can't go trick-or-treating in the ghetto. No amount of safe trick-or-treating precautions from the local police could ever make that a good idea. And of course Fell's Point, a distinctive Baltimore Halloween tradition, is the one and only place to go to see the local color and get that old community-feeling back.
Unfortunately, not every hardworking college kid can make it to the revelry on a weeknight during prime midterm season, and so a lot of people miss out on the festivities. Therefore, for the benefit of this contingent, and for those who just want to prolong the magic of All Saints' Day just a little longer, I have compiled the top ten ways to celebrate Halloween if you missed the Fell's Point fun due to homework, midterms, or general bad-luck.
1) Go to your local supermarket the day after trick-or-treating and stock up on half-priced bags of baby-sized candy bars. The prices are guaranteed to be slashed, and won't you feel smug with such a bargain buy when everyone else had to pay full price!
2) Create a Very Spooky Halloween drinking game: "Watch a scary movie and every time you flinch or jump or have to squeeze your eyes shut, take a shot," says sophomore Ciara Goldstein. Being scared was never so much fun!
3) "Take a trip back to Kiddieland by "trick-or-treating around the AMRs,"says junior Judy Tomkins. People may not be prepared to hand out goodies, but you'll probably be able to score some Easy Mac, or at least a few fabric softener sheets.
4) "Get a haunted house tape and play it in your hallway all night long. 'Sound of the Night' is my personal favorite," says senior Clare Graver. Note: Fog machines are another good way to bring the graveyard spookiness back home.
5) Dress up in a costume for class. There's no good reason to waste that lovely Satan getup simply because your professor decided he'd play the part by assigning a midterm test on Nov. 1. Not to mention, there's no better way to get a teacher to remember your face out of a lecture hall of hundreds than by dressing up like a freak in class.
6) Scare your roommate. Cut holes in your roommate's sheets and be a ghost while you sit at your desk and do your homework. Being a pest is always a fun option, and lest you forget, tricks are also an integral part of the trick-or-treating tradition of Halloween.
7) Stock your fridge with nothing but bowls of cold spaghetti and peeled grapes.
8) If you're particularly bitter about missing all the fun, or you're just more of a prankster type of guy, go smash the jack o'lanterns placed on the neighborhood stoops. Junior Charlie Seymour endorses this method explaining, "Last year I had to study on Halloween so I put a pumpkin on my head and then smashed it. But not while it was still on my head."
9) Fiesty freshman Rita Patel pondered the question briefly and then replied without hesitation, "If I were unable to make my way down to Fell's Point, I would celebrate Halloween by playing strip poker in my costume with all my hunky male friends."
10) Nakedness appeared to be a popular theme, corroborated by an anonymous sophomore male who declared, "I would take off all my clothes and look at myself in the mirror." When asked how this would celebrate Halloween he replied, "It's frightening."
11) Okay so because Hopkins students are so creative (it's true) and because I can't count (also true) I had to include an eleventh Top Ten Way to Celebrate a Non-Fell's Point Halloween. Enterprising young sophomore Ahmad Khalil answered, "I would build a haunted house in my dorm room and make people pay a cover charge. Then with my earnings, I would get really drunk and then steal everyone's candy."
Thus, be not discouraged ye for whom the perpetual homework mill cease-eth not even on All Hallow's Eve.
