It never fails to bring tears to my eyes when I reflect on the year that the tradition of dressing up for Halloween vanished faster than a squirrel can eat the carved pumpkin on a front porch. I’m not sure what happened to the days when you would show up to school as a superhero or a princess while eating cupcakes covered in red blood frosting with your classmates and ghost-shaped Hershey bars, but I want it all back.

This saddening lack of Halloween spirit makes me wish I was bitten in Elementary school by a vampire—they may be pale, but at least they never age.  

I thought high school would bring a new era of originality, a time when we all went back to the original excitement Halloween brought to our young eyes, but instead it just brought up jokes of costumes, such as wearing a Bears jersey and calling yourself a professional quarterback. I’m guilty too; freshman year I bought a Superman T-shirt from Five Below and called myself a superhero, but looking back, I’m more embarrassed of that than I am of my rendition of a pink Crayola crayon I pulled off in sixth grade.

While I can sympathize with the fact that Halloween falls in the middle of first semester, and it may be hard to find time to buy a costume with essays and tests overwhelming your schedule, finding a costume may not be as hard as you think.

We’re more than mid-way through October, and I’m sure you’ve watched the Spirit Halloween stores pop up in every storefront that spends the other 11 months abandoned—so why not venture inside?

These stores are the icon of Halloween spirit, after all it’s in the name. The cement walls are covered in gory makeup and plastic vampires. The costumes range from kids to adults and, new to this year, even a “make your own” costume section, so I promise you can find something.

And if the corny light-up ghosts and pop-out clown decorations that outline Spirit’s perimeter scare you, make your own costume. There’s no better time to take advantage of that obnoxious leather skirt that you thought nobody would ever buy from Forever 21 than for the perfect greaser costume.

Beside the never-ending list of reasons why a costume is not just a novelty but in fact a Halloween necessity, I think my point is best summarized in four simple words: you’re never too old.

You may begin to outgrow trick-or-treating, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still dress up and throw a party with bright red vampire punch and jelly-filled eyeballs.

Whether your costume is as original as your favorite TV character, or as mainstream as a black kitty cat, do not let your age kill your Halloween spirit. Dress up for Halloween this year and give yourself a memory to look back on when you think back to high school. For those of you who already have stayed loyal to the legendary date of Oct. 31, keep spreading the spooky spirit.