Halloween

I am not certain that I really like Halloween anymore.  I'm not sure when it lost its appeal.  As a kid, it was definitely in my top 3 for holidays.  You just had to knock on the door, and voila, free candy. I think parents back then likely had the same feeling as I do now.  I remember being told at school to check your candy apples before eating them as some crazy people would lace them with needles or razor blades or so the legend goes.

We earned our candy back then.  I don't mean to sound like an old man on a rant, but not in my wildest dreams would I have been driven from door to door to get the tooth decaying handout we were after.  There was definitely parents that accompanied their toddlers, maybe in a wagon or something, but getting a ride from house to house?! Unheard of. What fun would that be anyway? Half of the fun was cutting across yards, evading the dog that indicted you for trespassing through to beat your buddies to the next house.  If it was raining you wore a raincoat..under your costume of course...and same applied for the snow suits for that matter.

These days it feels like we don't get the same amount of snow that I remember as a kid.  I believe I was at least ankle deep in my plastic spider man costume that immediately ripped open at the seams, and the plastic mask clinging to my face by a single elastic thread while trying to breathe through an opening the size of a cocktail straw. This year, as my kids wandered from home to home in their climate controlled costumes that cast holograms of their choice onto the street in front of them, they finished rather early claiming that they were cold!  The only reason that we would return home on this night was to quickly enter the house to grab another pillow case because the loot in the one we were carrying was slowly tearing from the top border.  There was no such thing as too cold on free candy night.  

Now as a parent it kind of makes me wonder.  What in the world are we actually doing?  On what other day of the year, would we believe it was a good idea to go to as many completely random strangers houses in the dark, ask them for food and then actually bring it home and eat it? It's kind of whacked if you think about it. That neighbour six doors down that you eyeball from a distance because you think there is something just a little off is all of a sudden no factor on Halloween!  Just another chap handing out dollar store cheezies. 

I do wonder as well what the hell happened to the rest of the chocolate bars these days as well.  I of course purchase all the ones that I enjoy in the hopes that we get way fewer kids this year and I profit from their absence. Now I don't know if its that I am bigger and these bars are the same size, but I am pretty sure that an Oh Henry was at least 8 peanuts long when I made the rounds.  I had a Reese Peanut Butter Cup this past halloween that I mistook for the cap off of the soya sauce. The bag of chip that I stole from my son was exactly that...a bag of chip...not chips....chip. 

It will be interesting to see if halloween continues in the format that it is in now or if it will eventually just become a fable of the past at a neighbourhood block party with bowls of candy everywhere; or a preregistered hall party or something.  It's changed so much already that one can only assume it will morph into something else.  I just hope that no social justice committee comes up with the idea that health food would be better to hand out.  It would be hard to convince Kelly that I was buying chocolates in October to prepare for Christmas if that ever happened. I think I better start stocking up now...easter is just around the corner. 

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