Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I’ve always seen it as an excuse to dress up funny and get free candy, while many other people see it as a way to be whoever you want to be for one night. On the contrary, I find that on Halloween my friends and I can be ourselves.
There’s a fable by Aesop called “The Crow and the Swan”, about being yourself. The Crow was jealous of the Swan because the Swan had beautiful, pure, luscious white feathers, whereas the Crow had black, ugly, dirty ones. The Crow thought that maybe the reason the Swan had beautiful feathers was because of the water it was constantly bathing in. So, the Crow moved away from where he lived and went to the stream where the Swan lived. The Crow bathed multiple times everyday, but his feathers were still black. The Crow was focusing so much on his feathers that he forgot about eating, drinking, sleeping and the other necessities of life so he died. From this we learn that we can change our habits, but not our nature. In other words, be yourself.


Although we don’t dress up like crows or swans, for Halloween we always manage to be ourselves. Last year my friends and I celebrated Halloween in Brooklyn. We did all the things we like to do on Halloween like getting dressed up, trick or treating and screaming our heads off, like a normal rambunctious group of teenagers. What isn’t normal about us is that we randomly burst into song and dance, singing show tunes at the top of our lungs. We sang songs ranging from shows such as “Phantom of the Opera” to “Sweet Charity.” Even though what we were doing could be considered weird, we didn’t care!
When we were crossing the street, we would joke around and say, “Don’t stop for the paparazzi!” and then continue to strut in a conga line across the street.
Just our luck, a random person stops us. “Can I take pictures of you guys?” he asks. “You’re a Riot!”
“Of course!” we all replied, and we continued to cross the street. While this was happening, we didn’t care that little kids in adorable costumes with their yuppie, over protective mothers were staring at us, or that we were saying, “trick or treat” with all those little kids. We had a blast!


As ridiculous as this may seem, this is who we are. We’re not just a normal wild, obnoxious, loud group of teenagers. We’re a family of expressive, free-spirited people who like to show it off and just be ourselves! Even though these friends may graduate or make other plans for Halloween, those of us left never plan to stop being who we are and dressing up on Halloween. This year we were all hippies and sang songs from “Hair” wherever we went. It was the best Halloween yet.