#17: Mail for the spooky season

Let's let nostalgia take us by the throat

Oct 08, 2023

Is there anything better than the spooky season? The leaves smell so good I want to die from it. I worship at the altar of cheap Halloween decorations. And I am an unabashed pumpkin spice basic bitch - as my mom can vouch.

This week she visited Toulouse. I love her so much and I love this city so much, and getting to share it with her was so meaningful to me, I don’t 100% have the language for just yet. Gimme a year. Suffice to say we filled every single day with something amazing, from hiking up to Château de Montségur, to Scrabble on a café patio outside Cathédrale St-Étienne, to our nightly routine jamming to Hall & Oates on loop while playing Rummikub.

*Rhody and my mama in the cathedral, an hour before she played a Scrabble word worth 131 points and annihilated us both.*

And on her last day, eager to pack in every last drop of vacation, we partook in the incredibly French tradition…of a pumpkin spice latte.

I can’t help it. It’s the best time of the year, and even when I’m sad, the pumpkin season makes me so happy to be alive. Yesterday, all gutted that my mom had caught her inevitable return flight to Texas, I curled on the couch under a blanket and enjoyed my ultimate 5-minute comfort food: The Skeleton Dance.

So, with the glory and healing powers of the spooky season in full force, today’s mail prompt can be about one thing and one thing only.

What we’re mailing

Call me a monster (it’s the right time of year for it), but this month, this prompt has you leaving the house for a few minutes. No cosplaying the mail-obsessed recluse in a cobwebbed mansion for us!

But thankfully, you won’t be climbing castles to pull it off, because this month we’re digging up old Halloween pics and sending them off to someone we love. If you have photo albums cramming your bookshelves, do some time traveling and flip through for Halloween pics that grip your gut with nostalgia.

For everyone sans photo albums, don’t sweat! Comb your social media (the older the better), ask your mom for some scans from that middle-school party, or scroll a few years back in your phone pics to find you and some people you love dressing up silly.

Here’s exactly what you’re gonna do:

Fall down memory lane with your photos, either in print or your oldest backlog of social media. Choose one (or more) that include someone you can mail the pics to. The older the photos are, the better!
Go to your CVS/Carrefour/whatever local option you got with a photo scanner.
Print up a copy of your Halloween nostalgia and head home. Look at it at least twice on your walk home (or sneak a peek at red lights if you’re driving).
Write something on the back, pop it in the mail, and then eat a slice of pumpkin pie! Halloween is officially unlocked.

Who we’re mailing it to

When it comes to Halloween photos, nostalgia is everything. While it would be rad to send a photo from a year back - especially if it was a memorable Halloween - this month, I think we should send pictures from a different era of our lives.

I was talking with artist and human I love Caspian Samuel yesterday when they brought up the idea of dividing our life into different acts. They said we usually have 3, maybe 4 different acts, every 25-30 years. Maybe it’s a Saturn return thing. I’m only 32, and if I look on how much I’ve changed in the past few years, it feels clear I only recently clambered into my second act.

I think nostalgia for me meant sending mail from decidedly my first act, so this month, I chose my baby brother. He’s obviously part of my life now, but when he was little, I was obsessed with him. It helps that it’s his birthday today, making me sappy for him in this heart of the spooky season. He’s a whole 19 years old! Naturally, that means he needs a picture from when he was a 7-year-old obsessed with Indiana Jones.

*Me and my brothers, Tallahassee Halloweeen, 2011. I wore my costume 4 days in a row. This pic is heading off to my brother on the left.*

Send Halloween pics to someone who conjures sappy nostalgia: a childhood friend, your siblings as kids, your early college crew at parties. Witch costumes from the ‘70s or coordinated get-ups from a 2010s kegger - they’re all prime candidates for this month’s prompt.

While you’re mailing, listen to this

Monster Mash, obviously. Did you ever have any doubt?

(If you don’t have Spotify, you can listen to it/watch the unhinged live video here.)

This song routinely shows up on my Spotify “most listened” songs for the year. It is the nature’s call of October and will be so until the sun explodes and there’s no more concept of October left for us to perceive.

Tell me about it!

Who’d you send the copies to?
What was your favorite Halloween costume you ever wore? Mine was probably the year I was the Goblin King - I won a costume contest at a bar and beat out a different David Bowie!
What year are your pics from?

Let me know in the comments, plzzzz.

Snail Mail Sweethearts

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