Halloween 1988

It's Halloween night and so far, traffic has been pretty light here in the Den. Interesting to note that there's been a common theme amongst the few children that have come by and it's not that they are all characters from "Frozen." Instead, they've all been pretty vocal in their candy tastes and they've not been afraid to voice their displeasure. A new tactic for sure, but I counter with the following, 'Ummm...it's candy. It's free. I'd rethink the complaint policy.'

With that as a tableau, I've been thinking about Halloweens past. It's been 36 years since the release of the best scary movie ever, "Halloween." It unleashed a terror in the form of a nutter in a William Shatner mask and a forever shrieking Jamie Lee Curtis, typecast for good. If nothing else it taught us too that no good happens to teenagers when the parents are out of the house.

Ten years later, for Halloween 1988, another terror befell another innocent group of young people. While not quite as bathed in gore as a slasher film, what happened to these kids was equally as disturbing. It was the Blisters:

The Blisters

I'd been off my mission over a year in 1988 when it was Halloween party time at my BYU ward. Now this being BYU, Halloween costumes meant, and still mean, that the costumes are, in a word, tame. Translation: women cannot dress up like they are working the pole and that modesty and a modicum of decorum remains paramount. As my roommates and I thought about what we would do for said party, a couple of things came to mind...what would be most borderline offensive thing we might do and since it was off-campus, how far could we take things without a long chat with the Honor Code goons. Given those guidelines and since we were living in a student ward full of recently returned missionaries, both male and female, there was only one option - The Blisters.

Yep, a living loving parody of the sister missionaries of the time (everybody calm down, it was 26 years ago!). The drop waist dresses, courtesy of the local thrift emporium, DI, were pretty much required uniforms in those days. In some cases, so was the slightly superior smirk that I was sporting. Blister T, in the center, and I served together in the same mission and we were both on the receiving end of those slightly superior sister smirks on more than one occasion. Our fourth 'companion' is not in this picture, but I can assure you, there was a fourth. We weren't about to violate 'mission rules.' So when we made our grand entrance in all our hairy legged, five o'clock shadowed, superior glory at the party at the now long gone Bridal Veil Falls, we got the reaction we hoped for. We probably got a bigger reaction because our tags read 'Blister' instead of 'Sister.' It was, in a word, awesome. And just a little bit scarring.

Thanks to the Blister in the center, another picture from that evening made the rounds on the interwebs this week on the Facebook. It got a great reaction and I thought it was worth rehashing here tonight, 26 years later.

Happy Halloween from The Blisters.