Halloween

First published October 28, 2005

I miss Halloween.

Ok, there is still the fun of handing out the goodies to the kids, of filling every square foot of the yard with inflatable witches and goblins, and of going to Halloween parties where we all seem to believe that our friends won’t recognize us in our Hugh Hefner and the Sexy Playmate costumes.

But it’s just not like the old days.

First, I should explain that I have very fond memories of Halloweens when I was a child. This was many years ago, back when you could ring a neighbor’s doorbell and yell, “Trick or treat!” without first having your buddies set up a diversion to draw fire, then lobbing a percussion grenade through a window.

Back then, my brother and I would each bring home bags jammed with enough candy to keep an average school bus-load of kids buzzed on a carbohydrate high for a month. Like two little refined-sugar misers, we’d sit on the floor and sort our booty into carefully segregated heaps ranging from the Snickers and Almond Joys in the “keep-your-grubby-little-meat-hooks-off” pile, to the “let-the-dog-have-it” stack made up of “candy corn,” baggies of stale popcorn, and those red-and-white round mint things like they have next to the register at the Chinese restaurant.

Then my dad would come by like a mafia don and collect his percentage. He was usually kind enough to bypass our top-echelon inventory and raid the mid-range stuff, concentrating his take somewhere around the level of Good ‘N Plenty, Heath Bars, and black licorice whips.

We didn’t mind; we figured that since he had paid for the costumes, he was entitled to a taste of the action.

Then I began to grow up, and by the time I was twenty, the old people in charge of handing out the goodies stopped buying the “tall kid in a Casper The Friendly Ghost Mask” routine. I realized then that I was going to be pretty much out of luck until I had a kid of my own to do the bag work.

True, I could always dip into the bags of candy I bought to give away, but that just didn’t encompass the same spirit of adventure. Or the variety – how many inch-long Baby Ruth bars can one guy eat?

Now considering how well my dad did shaking down my brother and me, I decided that once I got married I would simply father twelve to fifteen kids, who could then be strategically deployed in handout-rich neighborhoods, like miniature commandos in Dracula suits.

Ok, so I didn’t think to run the plan past my wife before we got married, just to make sure we were on the same page on that particular concept. As it turns out, we weren’t.

So instead of propagating our own little trick-or-treating platoon, we had one son. And while he was a valiant little vampire, even during his prime candy gathering years there was only so much loot even a highly motivated kid could bring into the organization on his own.

And now my son is grown and living away from home, presumably facing the same Halloween candy predicament as his old man. I guess we’ll both just have to wait until he gets married and has kids.

So what’s a grandpa’s cut amount to, anyway?

Copyright © 2005 Michael Ball