Halloween's Unsuspecting Heroes

Halloween should be reframed as the holiday of the unsuspecting hero.  It's time its mascots -- the monsters, witches, mummies, and jack-o-lanterns whose images haunt our houses and yards the whole month of October -- were replaced with images of the overlooked kids we know and knew: the anti-social, the pathologically shy, the sensitive, the awkward, the socially marginalized. 

Think of planting a cutout of Steve Erkel in the garden bed near your front door, or of finding an inflatable figure of Don Knotts to dance in the yard, illuminated, and you'll know what I'm getting at.  Halloween is a celebration of the deliciously awkward, the unsuspecting heroes in us all.

It may seem to be a random suggestion, but it's not.  After all, who are the best beloved heroes of children's Halloween literature?  There's Charlie Brown of course, whose epic search for the Great Pumpkin was plagued with all sorts of disappointments, starting with his disasterous holeyer-than-swiss-cheese ghost costume. . . and Sam from Frank Asch's Popcorn, who in his attempts at being a gracious host to all of his friends at his Halloween party, buries his house in popcorn!  Also, who could forget Casper and Georgie, those sensitive ghosts who just couldn't pass muster in the haunting business. . . being, well, just too friendly and polite!

My favorite of the unsuspecting heroes of Halloween, though, is a little daschund named Oscar, who as the hero of Dav Pilkey's The Hallo-weiner is 'half a dog tall and one and a half dogs long."  Vertically challenged, soft eyed and sleek as he is, how he longs on Halloween to run with the big dogs . . . to embrace his inner canine with an appropriately threatening costume:  A mummy comes to mind  . . . or a dog catcher. 

But no.  Fate would have it otherwise.  As he arrives home on the eve of Halloween prepared to fashion himself into some sort of wonderfully scary thing, his loving mother calls her little vienna sausage over to her and unveils the Halloween masterpiece she has for him to wear:  a hot dog costume, replete with mustard. 

Poor Oscar.  Condemned by the fates of filial justice to wear such a ridiculous costume on such a potentially transforming night as Halloween.  He leaves the house sure that this hot dog combo will throw his social life, and any hope of respect among his classmates, straight to the dogs. 

Yet as he discovers through the course of the book, there's a blessing to be had in being just one half a dog high and one and a half a dog long. . . and one even to be had in wearing a bulky hot dog costume.

I won't give it away why.  Suffice it to be said that Dav Pilkey's The Hallo-Weiner is a great Halloween story to share with your children today, and everyday.  Or to just enjoy by yourself: in true Pilkey style, the language in The Hallo-weiner is playful and punning, a delight to the ear and eye of all!

In fact we love the story so much, I've bought three copies already -- one to replace the first copy we had, which was wore out by the time Pads came home . . . and one for the kids to give to their Auntie Weinie, my oldest and dearest friend, who at the age of six, and through no fault of her own, was rebaptized with the name by my mother.

The most memorable heroes of Halloween are those, like Oscar, who look forward to Halloween as an occasion to be transformed from their socially awkward selves through the mystic magic of the night.  It is only in their unforgettably humorous failures that they, and we, discover the strength of character they have possessed all along.  And that is seriously funny stuff.