In seventh grade I really had no idea how Halloween was celebrated at the junior high. My dad insisted that junior high kids were too mature to celebrate Halloween. Because he thought it was still 1963. Having gone to the elementary school last year and a large majority of the girls in my class obsessing over fishnet stockings I was not sure what to do.

I should have used my better judgment because the students would look for any reason not to wear a uniform and dress up, especially if it was a holiday. My mom had an early morning dentist appointment. I had no idea what to do, so I thought I’d make a last minute celebrity costume. I took inspiration from the posters on my wall, specifically my Alanis Morissette poster. (I had this exact poster)

So I thought that was a good idea. I already had long hair and I just wore a shiny shirt and some jeans and wore my hair in my face. I’m a seventh grader, I’m twelve years old, and I didn’t put much thought into it. I wanted to play it cool. I wanted a costume that didn’t look too much like a costume.

At P.E., a girl named Isabelle wore a French maid costume, and all the guys were drooling over her. They were also trying to lift up her skirt.

A lot of people at school got in trouble for not really wearing a costume and trying to pass off normal clothes as a costume just to stretch the boundaries of the dress code. Our Halloween treat from the P.E. teachers was we didn’t have to dress for P.E. Nobody really knew what I was dressed as. They all thought I was dressed as a hippie. I was trying to convince my friends and some other people in my class that I was wearing an Alanis Morissette costume. I even sang some of her songs poorly. I think I sang “Hand in my Pocket” and “Ironic”.

For some reason a lot of people dressed as jesters and hippies that year, although I did not see a hippie jester or a jester hippie. The girls who dressed like hippies seemed to look more like they were wearing 1970s style clothes to me with daisy print purses and huge bell bottom pants.

Lisa was one of the most popular girls in seventh grade. She had long raven hair. We had two classes together; English and Social Studies. Sometimes we would, by coincidence, walk to school together if I wasn’t late because I goofing off watching the Samurai Pizza Cats again.

She listened to rock and rap which was sort of taboo at my junior high.

I had planned to stay home and hand out candy and watch Friends. It was the episode “The One With the Flashback”. Lisa lived one street away from me. She came to my house dressed in a cheerleader uniform from the local high school. It was an older style uniform from the 1980s because my neighbor’s mom had one that looked very similar. I don’t recall her wearing a costume to school. Because she was one of the most popular girls in my grade, I made very horrible small talk with her. I told her something like “Yeah we got the good stuff.”

I’m not sure what happened - if she told other people we were giving away really good candy, or there were more people out that year than usual - but by seven PM we ran out of candy. My family usually bought between three to five regular sized bags. My mom took in the pumpkin, and people were still coming to the door. I had to watch Friends with the sound really low.