"Attention Target guests, although the time is now only 7:45 we will be closing immediately due to employment insanity. Please bring your final selections to the lighted check out lanes. As a reminder, we're open Monday through Saturday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. and Sundays 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Please excuse me while I live a life of religious fulfillment with this ceramic pumpkin and Spider-Man mask."

Those are the words you may hear echoed across the store one day. It may not be this year or the next. But trust me, you will hear them.

For those of you who have ever had the misfortune of just glancing over at the costume aisle during the pre-Halloween season, you know as well as I do that it looks bad, very bad. However, now that I have the task of taking care of these aisles, I'm hoping one day God will send a lightning bolt down on me to relieve the pain. It's not necessarily picking up items that makes me violently ill. It's the fact that if I turn my back five seconds, I hear a whirling sound and a distant giggling. When I turn back around, it's as if Bozo the clown on speed came running through the aisle I had just gotten back to a decent-looking state.

Do you realize the anxiety I feel as I watch a 4-year-old rip apart my work? I just want to look them dead in the eye and say, "For the love of God, child, why must you do this to me? WHY?!"

That's when I'd look up into the sky, burst into tears, and summon the gods of Halloween to take me away from this place. Then of course, reality would snap back and I'd have several angry parents and, most likely, police standing in front of me.

There have been some odd changes in costume design lately. When you ask someone what they're going to be for Halloween you don't expect someone to say, "A bottle of ketchup."

This year, you may get that response due to the ignorance of some costume company who has decided to make ketchup bottle costumes. I wish I could have been present at the meeting they had the day they came up with that stroke of genius. There are doctors, firemen and policemen out there right now not getting paid as much as the guy who thought of the ketchup costume. Is that justice?

The true horror of it is that I know once Halloween is over, Christmas will come. That's the jolly time of year when Santa and his reindeer destroy the clearance shelves and toy aisles.

In closing, I must say my feelings toward Halloween are of great negativity.

I remember my ignorant days as a child, going to stranger's houses, and eating candy they'd give me. Whatever happened to those days? Just remember this: Take good care of your children and love them well. Otherwise you may see them later in life cold and alone ... wearing a ketchup costume.

Sam DeReign is a senior at Oran High School. Contact him by e-mail at sdereign@semissourian.com.