I don't call it "dress-up" because I'm a boy

When I was about 13 years old I dressed up as Hannibal Lector for Halloween. I was one of those kids who had his last trick-or-treating outing at age 15. If there is a nationally accepted cut-off age for begging for candy, I don't know what it is. If two 70-year old women knock on my door tomorrow night, I'm giving them candy. As a kid I took a lot of pride in my costumes. I liked my costumes to be scary and dark. I've been the Crow, Hannibal Lector, Patrick Bateman, Freddy Kruger, etc. Tomorrow night I will be Ash from the Evil Dead movies.

Costumes have changed a lot, and my beliefs about what is and is not acceptable have changed too. For instance, when I was a young elementary-aged child I went trick-or-treating as a ninja. A close friend of mine was a clown. I was embarrassed for him. I couldn't believe he thought that was a cool costume. For me the Halloween costume had to be dark and horrific and action-packed. (Since then I've seen this movie, and changed my mind.)

Nowadays I am an adult and I know that it's perfectly fine for someone to dress up in a non-scary fashion. There are all sorts of costumes that aren't scary but are great for Halloween night: naughty nurse, naughty librarian, naughty Ghostbuster, naughty race car driver, naughty Rainbow Bright, naughty Hermione Granger. The list goes on and on. So there are many types of costumes which supersede my antiquated rule of dressing up as something scary. Guess I'm just old fashioned and want to follow the original traditions of All Hallow's Eve. I'm basically a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to having things my way, but like any old codger, I'll budge for cleavage.