Trick Or Treat

A bevy of Halloween thoughts and reminiscences:

Buying the candy is the dilemma - get something you actually like (chocolate!) and risk eating it yourself, or something you won't like and risk having too much and having to throw it away? I always go for the good stuff and yes, I certainly eat it along the way and then hope to have some left besides! ("Pleasure-seeker" personality, what can I say?) Buy it early to get the best selection; and then have to resupply several times during the month because 'someone' ate it all?

Then you have to wonder if you'll get any kids at all. But we always do. The little ones are the best. They sometimes hold out their hand instead of their little bucket. They are too shy to approach; they ask for a different kind; they aren't sure what they 'are' when you ask. And sometimes it's hard to know, if you are outside of 'kid' culture!

(Last night Mark gave a whole history lesson on why our little neighbor girl should be Sacajawea instead of Pocahontas, since her brother was Daniel Boone - they left a little confused! But another neighbor said she reported that she was both, by the time she got to their house.)

The bigger kids are just looking for the 'haul' although some of those actually comment on our pumpkins, so that endears them to us anyway. (We're easy) They don't have anyone to remind them to say 'thank you' but a surprising number of them say it anyway.

(Another story - when my brother was very little and had been given a cookie at someone's house, my mother prompted him with "Now what do you say?" His response? "I don't like that kind." She was always straight to the point, after that, if we forgot to give the appropriate response - "say 'thank you'")

In California, whole Mexican families, including the mothers, would Trick or Treat together - no costumes, just very large pillow cases... mothers too.

In our little town in Alaska, the 'trick' part was taken up by the high school crowd. Vandalism was rampant - one time even our little pumpkin on our porch was smashed - and the local store owners (the same ones constantly asked to donate to teenage fundraisers by the dozens) were always faced with expensive clean-up and repair costs after Halloween.

(One year in Alaska there was a beautiful display of the Northern Lights that had everyone mesmerized on Halloween night. Of course I was home handing out candy and missed the whole thing!)

When my oldest sister had her first baby, she made a paper mache "turtle" costume for him - he was just starting to crawl. It was so cute. My mother used to sew our costumes for us - and they were wonderful! One year I was a pumpkin - stuffed with newspaper or something to keep the 'roundness' in. I used to sew costumes for Todd too (and still have them all in a box in the basement!) until he decided that 'cute' wasn't his goal. They were darling - so was he.

(This year he reported that he went to Chipotle (Mexican Restaurant) dressed as a burrito just so he could get a free one! (Chipotle wraps their huge burritos in foil - so his 'costume' was him in a sleeping bag wrapped with foil - prompting Mark to wonder if he hadn't used up more foil than the burrito was worth in the first place.)

It's always amusing; sometimes surprising - Halloween.

(I bet if I went shopping today the stores would be full of Christmas stuff!)