Halloween 2008: The Aftermath

So Halloween this year was pretty good. We started our festivities early in the week with some pumpkin carving. We had five huge pumpkins but a lack of time so only three of them ended up getting carved. Holly decided that it would be fun to do Shrek and I unleashed my inner geek (what’s new?) and did Mario of Super Mario Bros. fame. Emma decided to do an original creation which turned out pretty good. Like every other year, there were lots of dads commenting on how cool our pumpkins were as their kids took our candy.

This year will be known in my mind as the year of the recycled costume idea. Emma decided that she wanted to be a devil, Alex wanted to be a tiger, and Hannah wanted to be a clown. Whether it is dumb luck or just coincidence, we have each of these costumes in the appropriate sizes in our costume box. Everybody was happy and we saved money. You can’t ask for more than that - especially if said costumes yield free candy.

Halloween night was full of trick or treating. Holly took the kids out for about 45 minutes then came home because Hannah was tired. Alex and Emma still wanted to get more candy so I took them out for another 45 minutes or so. As we were going from door to door, I couldn’t help but think about how different trick or treating is now from when I was a kid. Not to sound like an old man, but back in my day, the streets were full of children and it was rare to find a house with no lights on. While we were out, we only saw a few groups of kids that we knew and more than half of the houses were completely dark. One of my friends in the next neighborhood over called me and asked if we were getting a lot of trick or treaters at our house because he wasn’t. He then mentioned how sex offenders were being instructed to keep their lights off and not answer doors. Maybe we just live in a neighborhood where half of the people are convicted offenders. The internet says differently but it would explain a lot.

While I’m thinking about it, what’s with all of the strangers? I recognized maybe 5% of the kids that came to our door. Granted, I don’t hang out with the neighborhood kids so that’s not too odd but I didn’t even know their parents. Most of the trick or treaters that we came across when I was out with Alex and Emma were also strangers. I don’t know if they were actually from our neighborhood or if they were from a different neighborhood just trying to get more candy. I guess that Halloween is the one night a year that it’s OK to take candy from strangers; just don’t get in the weird guy’s van to see his puppy.

Once the kids were all trick or treated out, we headed home to see what kind of loot they had collected. To make a long story short, there was a lot of candy. In addition to the handfuls of Tootsie Rolls, there was a plethora of snack sized candy bars; everything from Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups to satisfy the dad tax to Twix that would satisfy the mom tax. Unfortunately, I don’t think that there were any full-sized candy bars but there were plenty of other options to choose from.

Despite fewer trick or treaters and few people handing out candy, it didn’t seem to me that there was a lack of quality candy. I remember when I was a kid getting snack sized candy bars but there were always more Tootsie Rolls and Smarties than chocolate bars. The kids did get a lot of the “cheap” candy but there was a greater ratio of good stuff to bad stuff than Holly and I remember getting in our youth. Sure, they had to skip over every other house so they worked harder for it but they definately came out with a good haul in the end.