Halloween Tips for Adults

• Go bobbing for apples in vodka. See who’s the first not to resurface.
  
  
• Wander around your neighborhood dressed in a HAZMAT costume…three full days before Halloween.
  
  
• When trick-or-treaters ask if you’ll put change for their orange UNICEF coin boxes, launch into a wild-eyed rant against one-world governments, the Illuminati, Masons and the Trilateral Commission. Make sure no children leave without literature from Lyndon LaRouche.
  
  
• If you wish for you and your husband to go as George Sand and Franz Liszt and he wishes that you both go as Dastardly and Mutley, consider yours a “starter marriage.”
  
  
• Clad your children in shirts two sizes too small and shoes three times too big. Have them go door-to-door requesting food staples.
  
  
• An “ironic costume” is a 6’9” man dressed as a member of the Lollipop Guild. Not a 240-pound man dressed as Strawberry Shortcake.
  
  
• Decorate your yard with fake tombstones. Have each feature the birth and projected death date of a neighbor.
  
  
• Never let small children carve pumpkins. They take forever and the world needs another “triangle-eyed” Jack O’ Lantern like it needs another smallpox epidemic.
  
  
• When designing a fun costume for your kid, remember, they don’t have a fucking clue who “Teen Wolf” was.
  
  
• Indulge in your worst passive-aggressive tendencies by covering your next-door neighbor’s house with eggs and toilet paper Halloween night and then spending the next morning standing alongside them on their front lawn, gazing at your work and muttering “damn kids.”
  
  
• When telling your kids scary bedtime stories, try not to end every single tale with “And then you and your brother were left to fend for yourselves.”
  
  
• If you get into a vicious bar fight while dressed as Flower from “Bambi’ we all die a little inside.
  
  
• Screaming, “Bring it on!” whenever children yell “Trick or treat!” at your door may result in a visit from the local police.
  
  
• While he may very well be your hero, only dress up as Nelson Mandela if you are indeed black.
  
  
• Always inspect your kids’ candy, making sure to hurl the Mike & Ikes, Bit O’ Honeys and tiny Chiclets boxes back at the cheap-ass neighbors who gave them.
  
  
• Unless it involves learning all the lyrics to “I Want to Know What Love Is,” do not go dressed up as a “foreigner.”
  
  
• No matter how much your kids promise to not leave their bedrooms, no self-respecting parent should throw an “Eyes Wide Shut” masked ball.
  
  
• When writing an invitation for an adult Halloween party, try avoiding such uninspired descriptors as “bone-chilling,” “monstrous,” “ghoulish” or “BYOB.”
  
  
• If you go apoplectic when your five-year-old son says he would like to go as a “witch” for Halloween this year, perhaps he’s not the one with the serious issues.
  
  
• You will not be the only one dressed as a Hooters waitress at the party. You will not be the only one dressed as a pimp at the party. But you could be the only one dressed as Terri Schiavo at the party.