Memories of a Halloween Geek: Why My Costumes Sucked

As a kid growing up in Guadalajara in the 70s, I learned this important lesson about trick-or-treating in Mexico: Halloween is a simple sales transaction. Kid offers up cuteness; adult pays for it with candy. The better the costume, the better the candy. The cuter the kid, the more likely the currency is Hershey’s and not Smarties. I was always a Smarties kid, never quite mastering this type of spooky sales process.

The first year I was allowed to trick-or-treat on my own—I’m thinking I was probably eight or nine, which seems unthinkable now, but this was the 70s, when kids were still feral, especially on Halloween—the product I decided to sell generated no excitement. The girls who scored big sold themselves as princesses, ballerinas, even puppies—all cute. Me? I went as a bookworm. A literal bookworm. Not the “person devoted to reading” kind, but the “larva of a wood-boring beetle that feeds on the paper and glue of books” kind.