That time of year...

It's about that time of the year again. The night more people will be pissed off at a club's security then any other night of the year. This time of year that I speak of?

Halloween.

It's the time of year that people can dress up in any way that they want to. Women can dress like sluts and the hookers fit in like everyone else. It's the time of year when anyone can be anyone and all the dregs of society fit in like they're everyone else.

It's strange for me to say that this used to be my favorite part of the year. The running through the cemeteries, hiding from the cops, toilet papering people's homes, and the never ending supply of candy. In some ways I'm kind of glad I out grew that stage. In many other ways I wish I hadn't.

I do remember a time when I was about 15 years old. Some friends and I decided to go out to the cemetery that was a couple miles out of town. We walked out there by following a railroad track, the whole time joking about how much it was like Stand By Me. Other than we weren't looking for a dead body and it wasn't going to take us days to get where we were going.

It only took us about 20 minutes to make it to the cemetery. After we got there we didn't even really think about what we were going to do, we just wanted to make it out there. We had heard a bunch of high schoolers say they were going there and we wanted to see what was going on. Of course, when we got there no one was anywhere to be seen. A couple years before there was a high schooler that had died in a car accident so we decided to go check out his gravestone and see if maybe anyone left anything there. So we started off across the graveyard.

Half way across the graveyard was a giant mausoleum. As we got closer to it a spot light lit up on the doors of it. All four of us jumped in different directions and hid in bushes and behind tombstones. The one cop in town was driving through the cemetery and was looking to see if anyone was around.

I was folded up as much as I could be in between two little evergreen trees next to a tombstone. Then the spotlight started moving around through the trees and the area near us. He never did find any of us though or he did and just didn't want to do anything. I remember the spotlight stopping on me for a second or two that felt like an eternity. Then the car drove by and he headed back towards town.

We ended up heading over to the tombstone of the high schooler that had died a couple years before. We stood there looking at his name and the dates . It was a very quiet moment. Lots of thoughts went through my mind. I think it was primarily the past memories of the times I had known him and the things that he had done. I knew him as well as I could but I never really knew him for who he was. I don't think anyone really knows anyone at the high school level. Your not really the person that your going to be yet. Your just beginning to know yourself at that age.

So we walked back to town down that railroad pathway and headed back to the bar that our parents were sitting in. As I walked in and sat next to my father he just looked at me and laughed. He pointed out the grass stains on my new jeans and said, "Your mothers gonna kill you for get grass stains on those jeans." Then I wondered if my dead friend ever had to hear that from his father.

That night ended soon after that. My father drank and talked with friends and I ate tacos and ran around town. It was one of the good times when nothing really mattered.

Those days lasted longer than most.