Goodbye Halloween
Kiki broomsticked over to preschool yesterday, and while nobody knew who she was (see Kiki's Delivery Service), everyone admired the giant red bow on her head. Kiki's pals did smashingly on the costume front too. One three-year-old asked to be a "vampire moose" this year, so his mother heroically pulled together a Count Moosula ensemble. Mooses, or meese, or whatever they're called, are part of the scene here in rural Crabtown so a plush moose-head was easily procured; then vampy teeth were slotted in and a brown moose-ish colored cape completed the look. Brilliant.
Overall, H-ween went smoothly in Crabtown. The town erupted in a show of pleasantness and goodwill. As is our local tradition, ghouls and ax-murderers genially handed out candy in the stores lining the town square. Even the trick or treaters that came to our house were very polite and good. And I'm not sure I like that.
I mean, it's all very mixed-messages, isn't it? We tell the kids to look witchy/impish/evil but be good. In Crabtown if you egged a car or toilet-papered a tree you'd probably get arrested and have to endure months of volunteer work and counseling about appropriate behavior. But surely being a little bit bad on Halloween is appropriate behavior? Tots eat vats of candy and turn into sugar-addled monsters, and we're okay with that. But, in Crabtown at least, it's all treat and no trick.
How about your town? Any mischief there? A mom in Atlanta told me she lets her kids play tricks on them but not the neighbors "for fear of litigation." Another Crabfriend reminisced about the old days, when a kid in her high school class took Halloween trickery literally to the max—by covering a neighbor's Plymouth with Maxi pads.
Now I'm not saying I want my car appliquéd with sanitary pads, nor a rotten egg in my mailbox, but... maybe in your mailbox! Just so we have something to chuckle at. Just so the kids have more to remember of Halloween than just the sweet taste of sugar. Because a bit of badness, once a year, where's the harm in that?
I think it's more harmful to talk about strangers and candy and razor blades and all that urban myth claptrap. I mean, either you let your kids take the candy from the stranger opening his door or you don't. But checking the candy? Now you're really scaring me!
Okay, off to nosh the rest of Crabtot's Halloween stash. Weirdly, she got an APPLE in the mix, from this creepy man who lives alllll alone at the top of a darkkkkk country lane...
The only tricks we got were kids who couldn't say "thank you," though I did see one sad little tree with a bit of TP in it.
You are so right, Crabmom. Kids aren't allowed to be creatively naughty anymore. Instead, they all just get their licensed character outfit at the store and compete to see who can get the most candy. At my kid's day care, practically every boy came as a superhero and every girl as a princess (including, I am ashamed to admit, mine). Sigh.
whatever. what happenned to underground?
has he been dismissed like all of the other dads out there for taking too much of a domestic role?
The big mischief in our neck of the woods came from the hordes of thirteen year olds, boys dressed as all manner of maimed hippies and the girls, well, not to sound prudish, but they were all dressed as what I could only guess was a practitioner of the world's oldest profession. They would limp and teeter up porch steps howling wildly about Kyle and that staph infection of his and how they hoped they weren't all transmitting the disease. It was odd, unsettling, and I think planned Halloween mischief. I'd gladly take some Charmin wrapped birches over that.
A
http://toddlywinks.blogspot.com
http://lifewithbriar.blogspot.com
Indeed, mama2bna, the teen-ho's staging discussions of "Kyle's staph infection" wouldn't thrill me either. I guess we are now the old folks lamenting the passage of time and the good old days, when rotten eggs and tp-trees reigned supreme...