Incredibly, I'm still not the Hulk

For two years in a row in the late 70s I dressed up as the Incredible Hulk for Halloween. My mother would mix green food coloring with Noxema and would slather it over me until I looked like the Incredible Hulk (or like an incredibly large, incredibly knobby green bean.)

About a half a mile away, there was a kindly old man who every year made fudge. Despite the 70s panic about tampered Halloween candy—as a kid I assumed the paranoia was mostly phoney; I've since learned it was justified)—we went to his house first each year. We were no fools: Homemade fudge beats the possibility of the dreaded Clark Bar anytime. To this day, I remember that man with immense fondness, though he has certainly long since passed.

"Aarrrghhh!" I'd yell as each Candy Giver came to the door. I'd then stand before some bemused businessman or housewife, scrunching my entire body to show off all 75 pounds of sinewy "muscle"—two greenish balled-up fists bobbing in front of me from the strain of my Hulk-like pose. Aargghh! If they were really nice, and most were in our extraordinarily friendly neighborhood, they would feign terror before dropping some cocoa-and-corn-syrup pancreas-busting confection into my bag.

Me circa. Halloween, 1978.

My fascination with the Incredible Hulk was, in retrospect, a transparent fantasy of growing beyond boyish limits. Some part of me is probably still waiting to outgrow those limits—perhaps the biggest shock of adult life was how childish it still feels—but I'm not sure how I'd feel about trying to get green Noxema out of my chest hair.