It Takes a Village to Stuff Children Full of Sugar
(I was going to wait until I had pictures to share before I posted this, but that could take awhile.)
Taking the kids trick-or-treating is just plain fun. Taking them trick-or-treating in the town where I grew up and went trick-or-treating is, surprisingly, really fun.
For the last several years, 3 out of my 4 siblings (from this parent group) and all of their many, many children and I and my one, now two, have used our parent's house as a Halloween base. They live in the middle of a fine community filled with people that nearly all of us know and, from their small hilltop perch, the halloween comings and goings are quite visible. My stepdad orders pizza, the final costume fittings are made, and we head out, sometimes together, sometimes not, in various-sized packs. Being that it is a small town, even if we headed out separately we would often find each other on Columbus Street, or Rainbow Ave., or on one-way Morning Street.
This year was different. One of my stepsisters just had a baby and, since her other two didn't know that it was Halloween, she decided to skip it this year. My other stepsister has older, wiser children who understand that the density of new housing developments offers the most candy with the least effort. Plus, that's where they're friends were going. In one fell swoop, we lost four children to the rapid development of Central County. My stepbrother lives an hour away and is in the process of moving 2 1/2 hours away. Too much effort.
Me and mine constituted the Halloween group this year. Out in the town, there seemed many fewer children this year. It rained a little before it all started, but turned into a great night for
t-or-t'ing--a little chilly, dampy, with wet leaves and sidewalks. Each year we make a large loop across town so we can stop in at my grandmother's house. She lives in town, but her road is not good for maximum candy acquirement, and we saw maybe 4 other kids. Curving back into town proper, we finished on Columbus Street, which backs to a cemetery, and those folks know how to do Halloween right. One house has literally dozens of jack-o-lanterns--at least 20 on the porch roof alone--all lit up with strings of lights. Another had a faceless scary guy handing out the candy and two young teens, fully scary-costumed, laying in the grass grabbing at people as they walked by. This freaked Stevie out in the best way--a little spooky, but funny, too.
Stevie makes it fun. That kid is a riot. One woman came to the door wearing an OSU sweatshirt. After getting the candy and saying "tanks!", Stevie said, "I see you're a Buckeye fan." She answered that yes, she was--was he? "Yes, but you can't tell right now because I'm wearing a pirate costume." At another house, a little old lady gave out the candy. As Stevie was walking back towards us, he said (loudly), "She was a nice lady! She gave me a choice!" She was still standing at the door and found this quite amusing. Standing to the side, watching our kid interact with people--it's something to see. I'm not claiming perfection or anything, but we think he's got what it takes to get along relatively well in this world.
Stevie went as a pirate. I expected to see hordes but didn't see any. One guy (on popular Columbus Street) said that Stevie was the first pirate he had seen. The thing that made Stevie's already great costume even better was the large fake parrot that I sewed to the shoulder of his shirt (no, Burb, it didn't flop around). Stevie received many comments on it and, every time, said, "Guess what it's name is!" When the good sports said, "I don't know--Polly?" he would say, in that barely-able-to-hold-back-the-bubbling-up-laugh-way that 6-year-olds have mastered, "His name is Name!" and off he would go, cackling into the night, quite assured that he had come up with the funniest name of all time. The kid charmed pretty much everyone he bummed candy off of.
Of course, he didn't have too much competition. I saw a lot of unattractive children moping about--children who had had quite enough candy, children with the repulsively violent costumes ripped from horror movies they're way too young to watch, even a young teenager skulking around in his "costume," smoking a cigarette. If you can afford to smoke (and do), you're probably too old to trick-or-treat, don't you think?
As for Marky, he dressed for the occasion in a black fleece footed pajama-looking ensemble with a full baby skeletal structure emblazened in glow-in-the-dark paint. You might not believe this, but it was his exact skeletal structure. Surely not green, though, you say. Oh but it IS green. He conked out in his backpack after an hour of staring at all the weird people.
I loved Halloween as a kid--back in the days before Snickers with nougat and razors and CSI-like inspections of bag contents. I can remember receiving--and eating--homemade popcorn balls! I can vaguely remember being shuttled around in the car when I was small--dropped off at one street, canvassing that street, and then being escorted to another. But what I really loved was trick-or-treating when I was old enough to go with just my friends. There are way too many parents around these days. Except for a few creeps (that I never encountered),
Halloween was the community's way of saying, "Let the kids run free." We could cover the whole town, burning thousands of calories only to ingest thousands more in a belly-busting candy-scarfing orgy that would put the Romans to shame. Not that we thought of calories.
It is still safe for kids to roam in my hometown, although today's parents might not buy it. That's a shame, because at what other time are children so appreciated? You might say Christmas, but the neighbors aren't buying my kids any presents at Christmas. Only at Halloween do the people of the village open the door for the children of the village (or the neighboring villages). Halloween is far from the morbid, Godless spectacle or shameless excuse to beg that certain types make it out to be. It is a charming little piece of Americana that I hope sticks around for awhile.
At least in small-town America. I would probably steer clear of Detroit.
Taking the kids trick-or-treating is just plain fun. Taking them trick-or-treating in the town where I grew up and went trick-or-treating is, surprisingly, really fun.
For the last several years, 3 out of my 4 siblings (from this parent group) and all of their many, many children and I and my one, now two, have used our parent's house as a Halloween base. They live in the middle of a fine community filled with people that nearly all of us know and, from their small hilltop perch, the halloween comings and goings are quite visible. My stepdad orders pizza, the final costume fittings are made, and we head out, sometimes together, sometimes not, in various-sized packs. Being that it is a small town, even if we headed out separately we would often find each other on Columbus Street, or Rainbow Ave., or on one-way Morning Street.
This year was different. One of my stepsisters just had a baby and, since her other two didn't know that it was Halloween, she decided to skip it this year. My other stepsister has older, wiser children who understand that the density of new housing developments offers the most candy with the least effort. Plus, that's where they're friends were going. In one fell swoop, we lost four children to the rapid development of Central County. My stepbrother lives an hour away and is in the process of moving 2 1/2 hours away. Too much effort.
Me and mine constituted the Halloween group this year. Out in the town, there seemed many fewer children this year. It rained a little before it all started, but turned into a great night for
t-or-t'ing--a little chilly, dampy, with wet leaves and sidewalks. Each year we make a large loop across town so we can stop in at my grandmother's house. She lives in town, but her road is not good for maximum candy acquirement, and we saw maybe 4 other kids. Curving back into town proper, we finished on Columbus Street, which backs to a cemetery, and those folks know how to do Halloween right. One house has literally dozens of jack-o-lanterns--at least 20 on the porch roof alone--all lit up with strings of lights. Another had a faceless scary guy handing out the candy and two young teens, fully scary-costumed, laying in the grass grabbing at people as they walked by. This freaked Stevie out in the best way--a little spooky, but funny, too.
Stevie makes it fun. That kid is a riot. One woman came to the door wearing an OSU sweatshirt. After getting the candy and saying "tanks!", Stevie said, "I see you're a Buckeye fan." She answered that yes, she was--was he? "Yes, but you can't tell right now because I'm wearing a pirate costume." At another house, a little old lady gave out the candy. As Stevie was walking back towards us, he said (loudly), "She was a nice lady! She gave me a choice!" She was still standing at the door and found this quite amusing. Standing to the side, watching our kid interact with people--it's something to see. I'm not claiming perfection or anything, but we think he's got what it takes to get along relatively well in this world.
Stevie went as a pirate. I expected to see hordes but didn't see any. One guy (on popular Columbus Street) said that Stevie was the first pirate he had seen. The thing that made Stevie's already great costume even better was the large fake parrot that I sewed to the shoulder of his shirt (no, Burb, it didn't flop around). Stevie received many comments on it and, every time, said, "Guess what it's name is!" When the good sports said, "I don't know--Polly?" he would say, in that barely-able-to-hold-back-the-bubbling-up-laugh-way that 6-year-olds have mastered, "His name is Name!" and off he would go, cackling into the night, quite assured that he had come up with the funniest name of all time. The kid charmed pretty much everyone he bummed candy off of.
Of course, he didn't have too much competition. I saw a lot of unattractive children moping about--children who had had quite enough candy, children with the repulsively violent costumes ripped from horror movies they're way too young to watch, even a young teenager skulking around in his "costume," smoking a cigarette. If you can afford to smoke (and do), you're probably too old to trick-or-treat, don't you think?
As for Marky, he dressed for the occasion in a black fleece footed pajama-looking ensemble with a full baby skeletal structure emblazened in glow-in-the-dark paint. You might not believe this, but it was his exact skeletal structure. Surely not green, though, you say. Oh but it IS green. He conked out in his backpack after an hour of staring at all the weird people.
I loved Halloween as a kid--back in the days before Snickers with nougat and razors and CSI-like inspections of bag contents. I can remember receiving--and eating--homemade popcorn balls! I can vaguely remember being shuttled around in the car when I was small--dropped off at one street, canvassing that street, and then being escorted to another. But what I really loved was trick-or-treating when I was old enough to go with just my friends. There are way too many parents around these days. Except for a few creeps (that I never encountered),
Halloween was the community's way of saying, "Let the kids run free." We could cover the whole town, burning thousands of calories only to ingest thousands more in a belly-busting candy-scarfing orgy that would put the Romans to shame. Not that we thought of calories.
It is still safe for kids to roam in my hometown, although today's parents might not buy it. That's a shame, because at what other time are children so appreciated? You might say Christmas, but the neighbors aren't buying my kids any presents at Christmas. Only at Halloween do the people of the village open the door for the children of the village (or the neighboring villages). Halloween is far from the morbid, Godless spectacle or shameless excuse to beg that certain types make it out to be. It is a charming little piece of Americana that I hope sticks around for awhile.
At least in small-town America. I would probably steer clear of Detroit.
posted by lulu | 5:48 AM
2 Comments:
Ouch! That last line cut to the quick. Up to that point, I thought I was reading the BEST BLOG POST EVER!! Including coinages like 'dampy' and marketing-ese like 'maximum candy acquirement'. Bottom line, when I grow up, I wanna have a parrot named Name!
I hear ya, Sven, and I thought of you and Broadway when writing that. I am, of course, referring to media-grabbing "Devil's Night" revelers/arsonists. I had to end the post with a bang!
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