Halloween Thoughts
When I was a kid, I loved Halloween. Creating a costume was so much fun! I don’t know if they sold costumes back then, but no one I knew ever bought one. It makes me sad now that kids don’t get to go all over the place trick-or-treating like we did. I would carry a paper grocery sack (that I decorated, thankyouverymuch) and come home with it full of candy. I was the only kid I knew that liked licorice so everyone would give me theirs!
There wasn’t any gorey, scary stuff that we were exposed to in my neighborhood, other than on Halloween. Well, unless you count the air raid drills we had because we were convinced that the Russians were going to nuke us and then we’d have World War III.
I haven’t had many trick-or-treaters in recent years. It’s gotten too scary for parents to allow their children to go to strangers’ homes. That makes me very sad. I’m sure they still have fun, but I’ll bet it’s not as much as I had. My best friend, David, and I would race from house to house, the chill of the night on our cheeks. Occasionally we’d stop and tear through our grocery bags to see what we had gotten. We hated it when they gave us apples! Some years David’s mother would drive us over to the “rich” side of town and we’d get actual candy bars or popcorn balls!
As the world was becoming a more dangerous place, and the trick-or-treaters were dwindling, a little boy about 4 or 5 came to my door one Halloween. I had to go into the kitchen to get the candy for his little plastic pumpkin, so I asked him to wait at the door a moment. When I returned, he was sitting on my porch steps with his mask pushed onto the top of his head. His chin was in his hands and he looked so sad. I asked him what was wrong and he said, “I HATE trigger treat”! I wanted to whisk him back 30 years and let him experince the joy of running free and eating so much candy it made you sick. I wanted him to have the freedom to run through the neighborhoods with no adults; to not need anyone to check his candy for razor blades; to be able to eat the candy and no one worry about red dye or ADHD.
I know. I know. I sound like an old lady. As I age, I’m realizing there really is such a thing as “the good old days”.
