Halloween was this weekend. My feet still hurt from promenading the blocks in my neighborhood with my grandchildren. My ass is still frozen from sitting the next few hours on my stoop with my neighbors handing out goodies. Hey it was better than going up and down the stairs everytime a little ghoul rang the bell. This year Halloween fell on a Saturday so we geared up for the masses of vampires, witches and cartoon characters.
I had to buy my candy at the last minute since last year my husband ate most of the 'good' stuff before I got a chance to put it into the little bags with the skulls. As we navigated the streets we had carefully mapped out earlier, it was obvious how high tech we have become. Mothers on cell phones coordinating with kids and husbands....where they were, where they were going and more importantly, which houses were already out of candy. This year I was smart, I bought too much candy which turned out to be just enough candy. (It helped that I hid it.) Last year my neighbor and I were outside literally breaking up packs of gum to finish off the last few tricksters. I am happy to say Halloween is NOT a dying art even with the fear of razor blades in apples (who'd eat the apple anyway?) and tainted candy. The kids are taught not to eat anything without checking with mom or dad and I teach them to check with grandma first if it is covered in dark chocolate. I do not tell them why. They think I am so brave for taste-testing their candy.
The kids costumes were great. Super Mario’s, wrestlers, vampires, and witches. But the adult costumes were better. We had the Burger King (who looked like he ate a burger or fourteen too many), the woman attacked in The Birds (thankfully those annoying singing kids were not part of the costume…..ristle-tee, rostle-tee, hey donny dostle-tee, knickety-knackety, retro-quo-quality, willoby-wallaby, now, now, now), a gi-enormous ghoul (that scared all the kids except for my one year old granddaughter) and of course, Michael Myers (and his Jewish counterpart Michael Meyers who had a yarmulke).
When I came in after a long day, a little saddened by the fact that all I had left of my candy stash was three mini toostsie pops, I thought about trick or treating when I was a kid. Although for some reason I couldn’t remember a single costume I wore, I did remember the Smarties, Bit o’ Honey’s and red Licorice I had in my bag. I remember my mother and I sorting out the candy and pulling out the pennies we had collected. My brother and I always competed to see who had more pennies. He always won. He was allowed to go further and stay out later. But when he left to go back out, long after I was sidelined, I stole candy from his bag. Not much, just the good stuff.
I remember the big colored chalk that we used to put in old socks to mark the houses that didn’t answer their door. Hence the ‘trick’ portion of trick or treat. Kids today don’t do that but they will call you out on Facebook as cheapskates. I never used my chalk socks to mark people’s houses. I used my chalk to draw on the sidewalk. My brother called me names. I stole his Charleston Chews. He crushed my chalk. I stole his Turkish Taffy. He hit me with my own chalk sock. I stole his wax lips. Hey payback’s a bitch!
The night usually ended with us lighting our jack o lantern, which looked pretty shitty considering we weren’t allowed to use a real knife and had to do most of the carving with a butter knife. My brother carved most of the pumpkin because he had my father’s artistic skills. I had my mother’s smile. We lit it with the tall Sabbath candles the Jewish lady next door gave us every year. The seeds we fished from the guts of our pumpkin were always salted and roasted and we loved them almost as much as the candy we had worked so hard to collect earlier. And we always had the first of the season cup of hot chocolate. I remember going to bed with the scents of Halloween in the air….pumpkin seeds roasting in the oven, licorice and taffy, cocoa and milk, and of course the smell of burning pumpkin flesh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlbYXISw3Ug
I had to buy my candy at the last minute since last year my husband ate most of the 'good' stuff before I got a chance to put it into the little bags with the skulls. As we navigated the streets we had carefully mapped out earlier, it was obvious how high tech we have become. Mothers on cell phones coordinating with kids and husbands....where they were, where they were going and more importantly, which houses were already out of candy. This year I was smart, I bought too much candy which turned out to be just enough candy. (It helped that I hid it.) Last year my neighbor and I were outside literally breaking up packs of gum to finish off the last few tricksters. I am happy to say Halloween is NOT a dying art even with the fear of razor blades in apples (who'd eat the apple anyway?) and tainted candy. The kids are taught not to eat anything without checking with mom or dad and I teach them to check with grandma first if it is covered in dark chocolate. I do not tell them why. They think I am so brave for taste-testing their candy.
The kids costumes were great. Super Mario’s, wrestlers, vampires, and witches. But the adult costumes were better. We had the Burger King (who looked like he ate a burger or fourteen too many), the woman attacked in The Birds (thankfully those annoying singing kids were not part of the costume…..ristle-tee, rostle-tee, hey donny dostle-tee, knickety-knackety, retro-quo-quality, willoby-wallaby, now, now, now), a gi-enormous ghoul (that scared all the kids except for my one year old granddaughter) and of course, Michael Myers (and his Jewish counterpart Michael Meyers who had a yarmulke).
When I came in after a long day, a little saddened by the fact that all I had left of my candy stash was three mini toostsie pops, I thought about trick or treating when I was a kid. Although for some reason I couldn’t remember a single costume I wore, I did remember the Smarties, Bit o’ Honey’s and red Licorice I had in my bag. I remember my mother and I sorting out the candy and pulling out the pennies we had collected. My brother and I always competed to see who had more pennies. He always won. He was allowed to go further and stay out later. But when he left to go back out, long after I was sidelined, I stole candy from his bag. Not much, just the good stuff.
I remember the big colored chalk that we used to put in old socks to mark the houses that didn’t answer their door. Hence the ‘trick’ portion of trick or treat. Kids today don’t do that but they will call you out on Facebook as cheapskates. I never used my chalk socks to mark people’s houses. I used my chalk to draw on the sidewalk. My brother called me names. I stole his Charleston Chews. He crushed my chalk. I stole his Turkish Taffy. He hit me with my own chalk sock. I stole his wax lips. Hey payback’s a bitch!
The night usually ended with us lighting our jack o lantern, which looked pretty shitty considering we weren’t allowed to use a real knife and had to do most of the carving with a butter knife. My brother carved most of the pumpkin because he had my father’s artistic skills. I had my mother’s smile. We lit it with the tall Sabbath candles the Jewish lady next door gave us every year. The seeds we fished from the guts of our pumpkin were always salted and roasted and we loved them almost as much as the candy we had worked so hard to collect earlier. And we always had the first of the season cup of hot chocolate. I remember going to bed with the scents of Halloween in the air….pumpkin seeds roasting in the oven, licorice and taffy, cocoa and milk, and of course the smell of burning pumpkin flesh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlbYXISw3Ug
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