The Slice: Recalling your first acting roles

Halloween is still several weeks away.

But I can’t wait. I have to ask. What do you remember about the trick-or-treat costumes you wore as a child?

Did your “Planet of the Apes” costume bring out your inner simian?

When you were attired in a law enforcement outfit, did you ring the doorbell and then read the resident his or her rights?

Were you a good witch or a bad witch?

Were your vegetarian parents comfortable with the implications of your cowboy get-up?

Did you ever come up with a satisfactory answer to “What are you supposed to be?”

Did your trick-or-treat years precede the era when adults sought to co-opt Halloween?

Did your mother get you and your sibling similar costumes because you were twins?

Was anything ever as fun as the year you went as a land shark?

Did you ever know a kid who dressed up as a scary priest?

Did you and a friend ever go as Lewis and Clark?

Did it get on your nerves when you went as a lion or a bear and every time you let loose with a mighty roar grandmothers tried to hug you?

Ever wear a costume intended to depict a real person in Spokane?

Were you ever dressed as a reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper with declining circulation?

Were your costumes homemade?

Ever have to wear a winter coat over your costume?

How old were you when cleavage became a Halloween option?

Any homeowner ever give you a lecture about why the whole princess thing is a self-inflicted sexist farce that won’t help you secure equal pay down the road?

Were you lucky enough to go trick-or-treating years before anyone had ever heard of the Village People?

Was it frustrating to find that no one could tell the difference between Groucho Marx and Richard Nixon, even with the cigar?

Do you suspect your parents dressed you as the Abominable Snowman just so they could hear you try to say that?

Did you or any of your friends ever actually get a rock?

Warm-up questions: Ever considered becoming a host family for a member of the Spokane Chiefs? Are the various things called “Ponderosa” in the Spokane area named after the variety of pine or after the ranch in “Bonanza” (1959-1973)? What is meant by the expression “Navy shower”?

Today’s Slice question: Do you care if other drivers in traffic see you singing in your car?

Write The Slice at P. O. Box 2160, Spokane, WA 99210; call (509) 459-5470; email pault@spokesman.com. If Spokane had a past or present pop song as its anthem, it should be …