Let’s pretend for a second that like other holidays, it’s reasonable to offer wishes for the Halloween season.
In that case, my first wish would ask that the coming weekend provides cavity-free fun for children everywhere.
My second? That all you unattached folks out there recognize that Halloween is the single most dangerous night of your dating life.
Look, I haven’t been single for a loooong time. But I’m not so far gone that I can’t reach back to warn you non-marrieds that if you’re not careful, Halloween will cost you your next three to four months – at a minimum.
It’ll work this way:
This weekend, you’ll head out to a party disguised as your hip, funny, sexy alter ego. There, amid the revelry and ample libation, you’ll spy some New Someone, who, it so happens, appears equally hip, funny and sexy. Before the night becomes morning, the two of you will establish a spooktacular connection.
Within a week, the two of you will meet again. Prior to that second encounter, you’ll enjoy a sweet wash of anticipation and not a little concern that the big, fake nose that New Someone was sporting at the party might not have been fake.
Ah, but the second meeting will go well. The nose, you’ll learn, was artificial, while the wit and charm were genuine. A third meeting – which, at this point, you’ll allow yourself to think of as a date – won’t take long to follow. Neither will the fourth.
You may or may not get to the fifth date – the point at which the intimacy issue wedges itself into the space on the couch between you and New Someone – before Thanksgiving.
In either case, you and New Someone can use the long Turkey Day weekend as a reprieve, repairing to your respective families’ homes and running the streets with old friends.
That Friday, however, you’ll weaken, reach for your cell phone, and hear yourself leave a sappy voice mail. Before the weekend ends, you and New Someone will talk in real time. And when you reunite, you’ll find that New Someone has changed into someone else: Significant Someone.
Note, this will all take place in less than a month.
Then, like that, the Holiday Season will arrive. The prospect of your initial gift exchange will send you wandering slack-jawed through strange new department store territories.
Seven days after Christmas comes New Year’s Eve, and you already know what that means. When is a kiss more than just a kiss? The moment Aught-Three becomes Aught-Four, that’s when. The ensuing 31 days will zip by faster than an Atlantic City casino bus.
That’s three months.
Two weeks into February, Valentine’s Day will demand (a) a decidedly more-polished gift exchange than its December predecessor and (b) a decision over the efficacy of wielding the “L” word.
Sadly, single friends, I can’t predict what you will decide. I can, however, predict what many of you will think.
You’ll think, “Why, oh why didn’t I heed the advice of that kind, wise, married man? Why wasn’t I more careful around Halloween?”