Halloween Hatred

I have always hated Halloween, and this year I have enough hatred to last for decades more.

1 hour and a half into trick-or-treating and the following has occurred:

• we ran out of the 130 pieces of candy we purchased (1 per person);
• we ran out of a 36 piece container of crackers (meant to be for us, broken into desperately by me when Chris did not return in time from the store with replenishments);
• I had to turn off the light so people would stop coming to the door when I ran out of individually wrapped food items and still children came ringing the bell;
• I was threatened by a 15 year old boy who wouldn’t believe me that I had run out of candy and stood at the door saying, “I know you have more, I can smell it” even when I showed him my empty container;
• I have lost track of how many times I’ve had to say, “Do you say Thank You?” (and to teenagers! Who should know better!);
• we have been asked repeatedly to donate to Unicef. I can barely bring myself to give out free candy, and now I’m supposed to give them all my money,too?; and
• I have vowed never to have children. Particularly rude, obnoxious children who show up at your door, ask for more than one piece of candy, don’t say “Trick or Treat” and instead just stand there with their hand outstretched and then walk away without saying “Thank you.”

One girl (possibly 14) looked at the Milk Duds I dropped into her bag, said “Oh, I don’t like Milk Duds,” rummaged in her bag, pulled it out, looked at it again, and finally said, “Oh, well.”

Chris left for about half an hour to get more candy. He had to go pretty far to get it because as he was turning out of our street, he saw that the church across the way is having some kind of festival. Cars are parked all over our neighborhood, and all the kids are coming directly here. So he knew that the local grocery store wouldn’t have enough candy for us, and went all the way to Target, which was nearly wiped out. During this half hour, I thought I was going to literally die, either from a heart attack, or from angry toddlers stoning me to death when they saw that I had given them crackers.

Chris eventually returned with a 100 piece bag of candy, which in the time it took me to write this, went down to about 50 pieces. We will be moving next year. We can’t afford the taxes in this town, let alone the cost of feeding all the children in a 10 mile radius on one night a year.

In other news, my parents had only 5 children at their door while I was having my nervous breakdown. However, my father said they all came rushing up to the door, grabbed at his candy tray and grabbed a bunch of pieces each and scared him so much that he backed away from the door. What the hell kind of “holiday” is this?

Yes, there are good kids out there. Kids like our dogsitters, who come properly costumed (none of that wearing regular clothes and just saying “I’m a gangster, fo’ shizzle!” for them), say “Trick or Treat”, say “Thank you,” politely accept whatever you give them, and enjoy a night out. But every year, there seem to be fewer of them.

Posted by: Supersonic Jane | October 31, 2005 | 7:43 pm
Posted in: Rants