Trick or treat? Or not.
Granted, I have no children. This places me solidly in the spectator box when it comes to child-rearing, but I noticed a pattern when asking friends if they would be giving out candy to kids this year:
“We don’t get them in my neighborhood.” Not a pattern, really, more of a uniform chorus of the same sentence. So…where have all the kiddies gone?
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that if we’re worried about violence and kids, maybe allow trick or treating, but take away the meat-cleaver-in-the-head costumes.
“Our neighborhood is full of kids. We see them come out of their houses in full costumes and we get the candy ready, then they get in cars and drive to the mall.”
Wh- Wh- What? The mall?!? Wh- Why? (In my opinion, kids should never be allowed to go to the damn mall, but that’s just me.)
“They do their trick-or-treating at school. People come in, set up a trunk or a table, and pass out candy there.”
Th- Th- That’s not trick-or-treating. That’s grocery shopping.
Why the shift? I feel like in the 80s we were plenty scared of kidnappers, razor blades and poisoned candy (the latter of which has never happened, by the way), not to mention ample cause to bemoan, in our pre-adolescent voices, the reflective tape totally messing up our costumes! We’re gonna stay on the sidewalk, mom, there are no cars there! Gawd!
But we went. And we had a barge-load of fun every year. Running door to door, swapping insider tips with friends met along the way as to who as giving out the best stuff, and mapping out the neighborhood in your mind for optimal candy-ation. I would not be surprised to learn that whoever created mapquest was inspired by childhood candy-mapping.
“Skip the one-sided cul-de-sac, it’s not cost effective!”
It was hard to choose one graph, which was delightful.
It seems sad to me that people are so scared of each other these days that we’ve taken this experience away from our kids, especially given that we actually live in the safest time in human history, it’s just that we also live in an age tragically miseducated by the 24 hour news cycle. (That US media link manages to still focus on conflict, but unless you think your kids are going to get into a religious conflict, the point stands. The Brits were better focused.)
But as I mentioned, I ain’t got none of them little critters, so I don’t really get to talk.
Well. There is one. A certain four year old, whose continued wellbeing feels like arguably the single most important task of the planet today… Would I want him trick-or-treating? The answer?
Shit yes! He’s going to LOVE it!
But then again, he lives in a small town, and has two responsible parents to chaperone his tiny Iron Man butt.
Big city? Packs of kids wandering loose? Would I want him in one of those in a few years? I….don’t know.
What about you?
Darn reflective tape. And giant eye holes cut in my headless horseman costume, which revealed that I still had a head. Ach! 🙂 K’s kids will be roaming the neighborhoods tonight, the older girls without parents.
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Excellent! Glad to hear Portland still Halloweens like the good old days. What age were we allowed to go by ourselves?
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Thanks to the marauding trick or treaters who had to leave with boring old cash when they caught me unprepared three years ago, this is the second year in a row I’ve been left with a big multi-pack of Halloween sweets unopened. They’ve disappeared from the streets of London too! Still, my husband isn’t complaining – he loves those little lollipops…
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Always good to be prepared, those little vengeful critters can be devastating. This year my neighbors put out a big box of pears and bananas, with “Trick or Treat! These are good for you, with lots of vitamin C!” or something on it. I happily took a couple pears, but fully expected to come home to my windows smeared with smashed fruit…but the absence of kids as demonic as we were has its benefits I guess.
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Almost all the kids in my old neighborhood got driven to the really ritzy communities for trick-or-treating. Rich people must give out better candy…?
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That’s interesting, actually. I used to live on the edge of a nice neighborhood, and we had a second round of trick-or-treaters who…well…this might need its own post.
But I’ve heard of that same thing, lately. We never did that! Seems devious…and somehow appropriate. Kind of a Robin Hood holiday perhaps? Give us candy and you can keep the good salaries the rest of the year?
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We only got a couple kids in our neighborhood, but it was freezing, snowing, and there were gusts of up to 360 miles per hour, so we’re pretty impressed anyone came over at all. We gave extra peanut butter cups to everyone who showed up.
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Holy smokes! That is dedication. I’m impressed that you opened the door!
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I have kids, but I’m not from a trick or treating background, so I say no. Who wants them hyped up on candy? Whose idea was that?
That said, we let them go this year because other kids in our building had jumped on the bandwagon and we couldn’t say no without looking mean. But then it’s Singapore so most of the safety stuff is out the window. They frequently get candies from strangers on the bus on the way home. (We had a big police sign in the neighbourhood today calling for witnesses to an “outrage of modesty”. Neighbourhood’s really going downhill.)
Also, in some places networking with neighbours IS working on college applications, so.
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True, the massive sugar influx is a bit sinister. Our trick or treating was always paired with ernest lessons about “no more than one piece a day” which I actually heeded, little hoarder that I was/am, and was finishing off my stash sometime in July. Personally, I would love to trick or treat for healthy snacks, but the munchkins? Probably not so much.
Be careful of those wilds of Singapore! (Have I already mentioned that your comments and posts have made me want to go back and give that place another gander? Cuz they do.)
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Nice to hear 🙂 As I recall you weren’t that impressed with it first time?
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I didn’t love it, but my life/mind/heart/perspective was sufficiently screwed up at the time that I don’t trust any negative impressions formed back then! I look forward to giving it a second first impression.
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