Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Halloween

I like to avoid Halloween completely. It comes from living in Baltimore City for many years, a stone's throw from Greenmount Avenue. Few little kids braved our long driveway, but lots of hoodie-sporting older teens with nary a mask did. Go buy your own #@#*(@ candy! When he was still around, I would answer the door with our Rottweiler, Max. Off the leash. He'd leap on the glass-over-cast-iron vestibule door and usually scare the yutes away. I miss that dog! After he died, we just turned off all the downstairs lights and hid upstairs, hoping for the best.

These days, Mr Minx usually hangs out on the front porch with a book and a bowl of candy, but in this economy, why should we be expected to hand out free cavities to strange kids, most of whom don't live in the neighborhood and are driven in from the city? So we're going to spend the evening elsewhere and hope no beasties will mistake our turned-off porch light for an invitation and pound furiously on our all-glass storm door, breaking it.

Holidays should be fun, not torturous.

2 comments:

Mistress Maddie said...

I love Halloween and the parties,but agree with you on the candy thing.On trick or treat night I light my pumpkin and watch tv in the other room so no one knows I 'm home. I hope your door stays safe and also toilet paper free!!

Anonymous said...

We used to hand out candy, but a few years back we got exactly one group of maybe half-a-dozen kids. I'm not buying candy for kids who don't show up.

Our community always holds its trick-or-treating on the Saturday before Halloween, so it's over and done for us. Pennsylvania is weird like that -- most communities don't hold trick-or-treating on October 31. After nearly 15 years here, I still haven't figured out why.