The other day, as I was walking along one of the streets in this Great American City we call Appleton, I saw an inflatable ghost that shook me to my core. Folks, our seedier neighbors have already begun to befoul their front lawns with the least Godly holiday. Halloween is still more than a month away, but my hands are already down to a third of their normal size from constant wringing. Every night, I wake in a cold sweat from nightmares of children throwing their souls by the wayside for buckets of candy. As my great-grandpappy told me before he tithed his final 10%, “The sure sign of sinning shows itself, son of my son’s son, through sweat-soaked sleep.”
I am not the type to dread Halloween because I think my house will be—pardon my language—the butt of some wacky teenage hijinks. I fear that cursed holiday because I know it represents every dark misstep in parenting there is. These morally corrupt values will only seep further into the susceptible soil of society if we fail to take action.
Let me ask you this, fellow knight in the crusade for wholesome values: do you think that the executives at Big Halloween Costume Company set out to corrupt the loose and feeble minds of children with their sexy costumes, or are their spirits so debased it comes as second nature to them? Which came first: the “Sexy Undead Proctologist Costume” or the child who comes home and says, “Mommy, Mommy, the Unabomber is my hero, I bought tickets to a Björk concert and I want to kneel for the national anthem?”
The worst offender of the bunch is no doubt the Banana Pervert. In some circles, it is also known as the “Banana Flasher.” You have undoubtedly seen it somewhere: not just a banana costume, but a banana costume with manic eyes and a peeled bottom half. I was already outraged by the getup when I thought it was alluding to the banana peel prank of yore, so you can imagine my fury when I was informed that the lower half of the costume is meant to represent the banana’s exposed love-making apparatus! Not only does the Banana Pervert expose children to the dark knowledge of fornication—it slanders the banana as well. There are plenty of foods more worthy of this sort of shaming, and Halloween should be used to educate children about their dangers instead of serving as the diabetes-riddled bacchanal is currently is.
If our society had any sense, there would be a finite number of approved Halloween costumes, and each costume would be accompanied by a mandatory role for the Halloweener to play. Of the approved costumes, seven would embody the seven deadly sins with the intent of terrifying children and showing them the error of their ways. Naturally, each sin would take the form of its complementary food: Pride, for example, would take the shape of a giant Reuben, shouting down any foolish toddler that refuses to eat marble rye. Lust would be portrayed by the most lustful meat, bison (although the living bison themselves are fiercely abstinent, the spectre of death curses them with insatiable horniness). If you have been keeping up on your culinary studies, you already know that Mr. Pibb would stand in for Sloth and that Greed would be played by Cobb Salad, the avaricious dish so duplicitous it makes digesting salad a business fit for Sisyphus. Ambrosia Salad would warn toddlers of America’s Favorite Sin, Gluttony. Wrath would wander the neighborhood in an unwieldy ensemble resembling Hawaiian Punch. Lastly, Envy would take the shape of squab.
What is squab, you ask? Squab, my friends, is nothing more than pigeon veal, the innocent flesh of a bird so young it has yet to acquire its protective shell of disease. We are so envious of pigeon eggs that we wait less than a month after the vermin is hatched from its prison to shove it down our gullet.
Sinful representatives would aim to create widespread fright among children, while other costumed volunteers would dress up as foods of great virtue. Some costumes would highlight the industrious nature of mashed potatoes, while others would dress as the breakfast corn dogs that replace the traditional batter with pancake batter and the hot dog with sausage. These virtuous souls would wander freely and notify the police if any serious crimes were being committed. No system is perfect, but with enough intervention from our community of Real, Down-To-Earth, Salt-of-the-Earth, God’s-Green-Earth-Loving Americans, we can eradicate horrifying crimes like children selling water near our property without the appropriate paperwork.
I have never spawned nor raised children, but my years of silently judging the parents of loud, fun children have made me an expert in childrearing. When I hear children enjoying themselves in public and encroaching on my otherwise silent, enjoyable space, I know immediately that their parents have already failed to raise a goodhearted, wise person. This sort of parenting is an epidemic demanding outside intervention from those of us who know the difference between deplorable sin and fun activities like playing The Quiet Game or practicing cursive.
After a few years of food-centric reeducation, we would see noticeable change both in the actions of our children and in the practices of grocery stores across the country. Respectable bananas would no longer be placed in the Corner of Lust at every store, but in the Shelves of Piety. Any child raised with an ounce of sense in their head would react with utter disgust upon seeing a Reuben.
Gosh darn it, Halloween is fast approaching and we all must play a part in transforming this agent of erosion in the bedrock of American morality. I have already purchased twenty Banana Pervert costumes with the intent of sewing the bottoms shut. In the period between now and Halloween, other action must be taken to slow the spread of the holiday’s corruption. Until we can take to the streets in our food-sin costumes, we need to boycott the American dollar for its role in purchasing Sexy Pigeon costumes. Take to the Twitters and Facebooks and share videos of your money burning in the backyard to show the American people the errors of their ways.
