For the last ten years I have been wearing my favorite mask, I like to call the it the “Old Hag,” and none of the kids in the neighborhood come to my house for candy…not one.
I can’t figure it out.
And every year I buy candy, only to have to eat it myself the rest of the year. I’ve got Sweet Tarts and suckers left over from 1988.
You cannot not make a pie out of old sweet tarts—I’ve tried.
My lonely Halloweens are getting pretty ridiculous.
And now, they have gone and ruined Halloween, those…those …Vampires!
They have scared all the little kids and parents so thoroughly well, that instead of the neighborhoods crawling with all the older brothers taking their little sisters and baby brothers dressed up in all sorts of cute costumes, so that the old people can look forward to something besides reruns of “Halloween, H50 ”—Mom and Dad take their cute little goblins and pirates to the local “mall” or “community center,” where for an admission fee, they can participate in silly things like “costume parties” and “bobbing for apples” and “face painting” booths…all promoted as “safe” and “fun” for one and all.
It’s enough to make you scream.
How did they take a perfectly wonderful holiday and ruin it? A holiday where every older brother and his conniving Eddie Haskill school chum could think of wonderful ways to sneak out with mom’s toilet paper and dad’s shaving cream, and destroy their favorite people’s houses, while at the same time thinking of really gruesome stories to scare their sissy little sisters with—stories of the hook man, who would kill girls in the backseat of cars, and wild animals who lurked behind bushes?
My brother’s personal favorite was the wild cougars waiting at the end of the street. Or better yet, the alligator that we had to pass on our way around the block. Never mind that they were actually there. (We lived at the edge of the Everglades.) It was the unbelievably frightening thought in a naďve six-year-old’s mind, that on a dark moonless night I would be eaten alive by some wild animal while my brother watched, only to go home and tell our parents that he didn’t see a thing, but he would mention that the last time he saw his sister she said he could have her candy.
Oh, the good old days. (sigh)
How did they do it?
Well, how else do they scare us every single day of the week…on the news.
They did it with the famous “Child dies from a razor in Candy” story.
Who remembers that story? The story of some kids candy being tainted with poison? And razors. Razors, that were somehow sneaked into a Milky Way; and because the parents did not carefully examine every single piece of candy, (which is exactly what they wanted the parents to do) their kid might actually DIE! From a wicked person in the neighborhood who put the candy in, just to kill the kid.
Neigborhoods were no longer safe.
At first…the parents were shocked. Had it come to this? We do not dare let our little ones out alone at night? Were there really monsters who would put razors in candy to hurt little children? Best not to take chances…best to go in groups to the local mall…where all the candy is inspected by caring and loving mall candy givers.
And thus the great migration to the “safe” and “fun” Halloween happenings. Into the malls, where mom and dad could spend even more money and out of those scary and wicked neighborhoods, where the children might get run over by an SUV, a drunk teenager, or even worse…get really scared by an old woman.
Ever since that year, the reports of tainted candy have all but disappeared. Instead we have the real monsters: the serial baby killers and they are out every night of the year.
Still, I have hope.
Hey…somebody has to keep up the old traditions!
Have a Happy Halloween!
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