Ah yes, yet another Halloween in the books, another twelve months before my zombie costume comes out of storage again to be put to use. Though after last night, I’m of the mindset that next year requires a new costume as the zombie gig wasn’t scaring the kids like a couple of years ago when I first wore it. We don’t go overboard with decorating for Halloween; usually our setup consists of a pumpkin, a clear door cling with an image of a skeleton on it for our storm door, and a strobe light behind the storm door. I used a blue gel in the strobe last night and set it on a slow cycle, and the combination of the blue color and the appearance/disappearance of the skeleton on our storm door looked really good from the street. It’s not much, but at least it doesn’t scare off the kids like our neighbor did last year. He invested a lot of time and effort to create a spooky setting for his house, which included some of his friends coming over to assist in the effort (I remember the sound of a chainsaw coming from the direction of his house). He did such a good job that kids would get to his driveway, look at the house, then move on, too afraid to venture to the front door. When you’ve created a setting where a child is willing to pass on getting more candy rather than risk their life going to your front door, then Mission Accomplished!
The fall weather at the end of October reminds me of those times many years ago when I would go from door to door, adorned in some costume (usually my Hot Wheels or Batman costume), asking for candy. The neighborhoods where I lived in New York had sidewalks, which are very conducive for getting your parents to go out on an extended candy hunt. It was also not unusual for kids to begin roaming the neighborhoods in fairly large groups, adding new kids who were just hitting the streets and joining up with the larger groups. It was like having multiple, miniature riots roaming about, all with crazed looks in their eyes located behind their Ben Cooper masks seeking an evening of sugar-crazed, chocolate-driven hedonism and iniquity. Nobody had evolved to the point of egging or TPing houses that gave out bad candy, and flaming bags of dog crap were definitely out of the question as nobody wanted to risk a severe grounding/spanking for stealing matches from our parents. It was just a fun evening going around seeing how much candy you could fit into a bag that was almost as big as you were.
Now as a parent it’s my turn to play the role of supervisor for my daughter’s Halloween activities. The past couple of years I’ve stayed home and passed out candy while my wife took the child around the neighborhood on her Candyland Expedition. Last night, as I’ve done the past couple of years, I dressed in my zombie costume in which to greet the trick or treaters in the neighborhood, and there weren’t that many. I see kids around all the time, so I’m wondering if there are fewer than I think around or if they’re choosing not to observe a “satanic” holiday. Beats me. This year, though, rather than stay inside where the strobe light would give me yet another headache, I hid out behind the cars in our driveway. Once the kids got on the front porch, I crept up the walkway (the only way in or out) and yelled “BRAAAAAAAINS!” One of the first times I did that it was to a brother and sister who were obviously out for an evening to be scared by a middle aged person in a zombie costume. The girl screamed as I came up the walk, and did what every big sister would do in a situation like that: she grabs her brother and swings him around so he’s in between me and her. It was such a funny reaction on her part that I took off my mask and let them take whatever they wanted from our candy bowl. It was the funniest reaction I had seen since our trip to Myrtle Beach this past June when we tipped our crappy waiter at Joe’s Crab Shack $1 on a $45 bill (and he didn’t even deserve the $1, let me tell ya).
My daughter returned with my wife after about an hour, bearing a plastic pumpkin full of candy—and some good stuff at that. I know my daughter went out and got the candy, but I’m wondering if she’d really miss a couple of those Reese’s peanut butter cups. As a parent, I must taste test these things to make sure they’re okay for her to eat, after all! After my daughter went to bed last night, visions of Processed Sugars dancing in her head, I took a few minutes to dump out the contents of her pumpkin pail to look over her candy, and it’s a good thing I did. As I’ve already mentioned, she got some good candy this year, and some folks around the neighborhood spent some money on quality sugar-fixes this year. But there’s a cheap bastard somewhere in our neighborhood. As I rummaged through the pile of candy I discovered someone had purged their pantry of old EASTER CANDY and had passed it out for Halloween last night! I’m sure you’re thinking, “How do you know it was Easter candy?” You can tell by the wrapper. You’d expect a Halloween theme on the candy: a ghost, a witch, a monster, certainly. But the Easter Bunny? I doubt it very seriously. And I don’t think chocolate eggs are easily found on store shelves come October.
One on hand, that’s a good way to get rid of old candy in your house, and I have to admire their audacity in doing that. But what kind of cheap sonofabitch gives out candy that’s at least six months old to little kids? Probably the kind of cheap sonofabitch that has an adjustable rate mortgage on their house, in which case all I have to do is sit back and wait for the for sale sign to go up in their front yard and I’ll know who the guilty party is.
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