Halloween! Ghosts, ghouls, goblins! So scary! But have you ever heard of the Halloween canon event? That’s the biggest thing you should be afraid of this Halloween season. Run!!!!!!!
Canon event: a significant, often painful or formative experience that is seen as inevitable and necessary for a person’s growth. Think of this as something we all eventually go through. For example, finding the perfect, most fun friend group ever the first two weeks of college, then by October 31, the friend group totally breaks up. Canon event. Or having an on-again off-again relationship with an emotionally unavailable person that your brain convinces you to think is the one all to see it end after three days. Canon event. Or your first real heartbreak…the realest canon event of them all. Something about the fall, maybe it’s the “cuffing season” pressure, makes these canon events happen more often. I challenge you to ask a couple of friends when they’ve experienced these moments, my inductive reasoning says autumn.
Now that we know what a canon event is, let’s move on to how to avoid them. You don’t. You can’t. There is no way around, that’s why it’s a canon event. In all seriousness, canon events make us who we are. It’s the social exposure therapy that’s necessary for becoming an adult. Losing friends over dining hall disagreements and library study group conflicts begins balanced and experienced adults. We go into first experiences as malleable and innocent hopefuls and calcify into bruised, yet brighter humans.
My Halloween canon events have been extremely formative. Each year, it’s something different. My first year of college, my canon event was the extreme social pressure to find the best spooky night activity. When you’re a first year in college, discovering the social scene is not for the weak. The pressure is especially strong for first years since your social circles are still developing and shaky. The canon event of finding where the parties are and what costume to wear is a unique experience that has always existed for first years in college.
My second year was the infamous friend group breakup. People change and grow apart. This “change” occurred on Halloween! This was a true canon event that people have warned me about. My elders passed down the notion that every friend group experiences a breakup and it’s never really pretty. Lucky for me, I made it out alive and am still friends with everyone from that group!
Last year, I experienced the most confusing, fun, silly, and crazy canon event. Duh duh duhhhhhh. Pro tip: if you ever want to tell someone how you feel about them, definitely don’t do it on Halloween, especially when all the makeup and costume chaos covers up who you really are. Save yourself from useless heartache and just grab a candy bar instead; avoid these conversations even if they’re at the same party as you. I’ll save you the hysterics, but it was an exciting time … I guess. Halloween weekend last year happened in a glimpse and was never to be seen again. Canon event. Experiences like this one teach us a lot about ourselves. When we’re young and impressionable, we’re susceptible to questionable people and negative energy. It’s like we turn 20 and everything we’ve known and loved about ourselves fly out the window; we let everything someone else thinks about us consume us. Like I said before, these moments are formative and shape us into who we are. We need these moments.
My advice to you, at my old age (21) and having canon upon canon, is to just enjoy the ride. Don’t fight it. Let yourself have fun and do things that your older self might cringe at. Be with your friends and do group costumes. Start talking to a love interest on Halloween night and blame it on the candy corn! Just be yourself, even if you don’t know who that is just yet. Canon events can be painful and uncomfortable, but they’re thrilling and required for growth. Happy Halloween, I wish you all the best!
