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September 30, 2010 at 08:00 PM
It’s October and my thoughts have been forced to turn to masks, identity and truth — pretty heavy stuff. But I’ve also been thinking about what Rodney Dangerfield, the comic philosopher, once said about the holiday: “On Halloween, parents send their kids out looking like me.”
Even scarier is the fact that parents don Halloween attire that on any other day would get them arrested, at best, or committed to a mental institution, at worst. Or the fact that parents let their kids go out at night cloaked as witches, demons or zombies from “Night of the Living Dead.” And give them permission to extort treats with threats of mayhem.
OK, I know I’m being a spoilsport. But, honestly, everything about “All Hallow’s Eve” is just plain wrong — a quick Google search reinforces my claim. But all this leads me to think on another level: I wonder what Halloween says about the human desire to assume fake identities. Do people expect allowances from others if they’re masquerading as someone else? Do they get more “treats” if they do things that normally lead to “tricks”?
People wear masks in our business, too. Advisors dress a certain way in order to impress prospects. They furnish their offices just so to make a certain point. They put certain letters after their names and put up certain types of websites that convey the right message. (“I’m competent AND trustworthy!”)
