This past Halloween was one of the first, in a very long time, where we had bought candy for kids that were going to be knocking on our front door.  I have to admit, I was totally excited about it.  It’s been about 8 years since we’ve lived in a private home and the apartments we’ve lived in since didn’t see much Halloween action.  In anticipation, I sent Sean out for tons of candy.  He protested plenty, insisting that we might have one or two Trick-or-Treaters.

Things definitely started off slowly.  I think the first kid showed up around 7:30.  That seemed kind of late to me.  I can remember getting home from school and wanting to hit the streets right away.  Maybe things have changed or I’ve just forgotten how it used to be.

One thing I know for sure though is that we didn’t act like the kids do these days. Yeah we might have sprayed shaving cream on stop signs and wrote our name in the streets with Silly String.  I wish I would have seen more of that and less of what we experienced. 

In the span of 2 hours, we had about 40 kids come to our door.  A few of them were really polite and said Trick-or-Treat and even a thank you here and there.  But the majority of the little beasts were rude. One kid actually rang our door bell a total of 6 times and then he started violently knocking on our front door.  I whipped it open so fast and yelled BOOOOOOO, he almost peed his pants.  I really wish he had. His mother was standing with him the entire time and never said a word.  My mother would have whopped my ass, taken all my candy away and ended Halloween right then and there, had I acted the same. 

Then there were the ones who actually grabbed the door knob and opened the door before I even got downstairs.   It wasn’t just a one time deal either. When did that become acceptable?  Finally I started locking the door after each round of kids came through. 

Oh but it doesn’t even stop with the kids.  One parent made her little girl hand out Avon booklets to the homeowners.  Another mother dropped her business card into our mailbox. Both the business card and the Avon book went right into the garbage.  What on earth were they thinking? 

The biggest issue I had with the evening was the door to door car service for all of these kids.  Out of all the kids, maybe 5 of them walked from house to house.  The rest were carted from one door to the next by car.  Not very fun and also, not very safe.  We had a stream of cars up and down our block for 2 straight hours with kids darting in between them and running all over the place getting from one car to the next house back to the car to the next house. 

I can remember so vividly walking around our neighborhood with our flashlights and friends, running to doors and then across the nicely manicured lawns to the next door step…over and over and over again.  Apparently those days are gone.  And I think that’s really sad.  It really made me want to get out there and show them how Trick-or-Treating is really done.  Maybe we’ll do that next year.