I wrote this Sunday night but didn’t post it because… I don’t know. I just didn’t… like a lot of things I’ve written. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll go back and post a few other things belatedly. Just because.
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Well, that was fun.
Like clockwork, another Halloween has come and gone.
This year, I handled candy duties. It kicked ass. I LOVE Halloween. I always have. It’s such a fun and cool holiday, though not as scary or intense as it used to be.
I love seeing the smiles on the kids’ faces as I dole out candies. It warms my cold, dead heart. Haha.
There weren’t as many kids this year as there have been in past years, owing, I’m guessing, to the poor, “Seeing Purple”-ish weather. I mean, it wasn’t as horrific as it was in my story, but it was indeed rainy and cold, so I think that a bunch of the smallest kids must have stayed home.
It was cool, though. I had the most fun with the “hot chick” demo, of course. This neighborhood has a small clique of mean girls, aged 13-14, and they went out this year as a troupe of sexy cats. When I saw them coming I jumped at the chance to run some game on them. Instead of just giving them the candy like everyone else, I instructed each one to say “Trick or Treat”, you know, like they’re supposed to, and criticized them when they didn’t open their bags wide enough, and I did all of this with a Tom-ish mischievous smirk. They ate it up, predictably. My mom thought I was being creepy, though (which I was, but that was obviously the point).
There were a few other hot girls, but not very many. I wish there had been more. I kind of pined for the days of the hookerwear and prostitots.
But other than all of that, it just wasn’t very interesting.
I don’t know. Is it just me, or has Halloween ceased to be a kids’ holiday? It seems that the people who love it most these days are adults and teens.
The little kids I saw this year looked happy to get candy, but otherwise bored.
TBH, I can’t really blame them. This neighborhood is just boring for Halloween. It sucks, frankly. Very few people, well, nobody, really, put up decorations this year. And I think that this neighborhood isn’t so alone in it’s attitude, unfortunately.
I remember when I was a kid, and Halloween was actually scary. I mean, legitimately so. Every house put up decorations, and they all tried to out-do each other for horror. God, did it fucking rule back then. When I was a kid, in the eighties, parents didn’t supervise kids as they went trick or treating. They stayed home to dole out candy and frighten children as best they could, and gave supervision duties to older kids, often to extremely detrimental effect.
It was this practice that made the holiday what it was. The older kids tasked with leading the younger kids back then were invariably bullies. I remember quite well much of the “advice” I was told by them as I collected candy, such as which candy companies were under investigation for putting cyanide in their product, which houses in other neighborhoods were owned by pedophiles and serial killers, and which candy bars were rumored to occasionally have small nails or razor blades.
And I’ll never forget the annual vandalisms, either. Every year, at least one family was away on vacation during Halloween weekend, and they invariably left out a big bucket of candy for the kids, with a wish that such a bucket would let them escape punishment. It never worked. Whenever my group got to those house, we would steal all of the candy, I mean, every last little piece of it, and then vandalize the property somehow.
And of course we were merciless to the poor dolts who refused to participate. We punished as many of those houses as we could, even if all we could think to do was pee in their yards.
I remember one house that was filled with Christian fundamentalists who every year actually gave out Christian literature to unsuspecting kids. They would also lecture kids on how we were worshiping the devil and such by dressing up as ghouls and vampires. God, did we hate them. They were the house that got the toilet paper. Every. Single. Year. And we always egged the Muslim kids’ house, because they didn’t participate, of course, and because they were Muslim. And we occasionally vandalized the black kids’ house, too, because they were niggers.
Good times, I guess, though I was always the quiet kid that got kind of roped along. I’m not naturally outgoing and I certainly was not a natural bully, so it took some prodding and threats of violence to get me to participate, though I was usually glad I did, despite the inevitable regrets a week later.
Kids these days don’t travel very far at all past their houses, I think, and certainly not without parental supervision. One of the great things about the Halloweens of my youth was how us kids would just explore. We could and did travel wherever we wanted, and we always got candy as a reward. My legs were always sore the next day, but wow, was it fun.
And… I liked how we actually did Halloween at night. Not in the afternoon. That was always a treat by itself. And I liked the costumes, which we actually had to make ourselves. Always, we went for something hideous. I remember going out one year as an abomination. I was a hunchback covered head to toe in oozing, bloody sores. And one year I went as a spider attack victim, as in I was covered in blood, pock marks and plastic spiders. Always, we tried to be monsters. I mean, not superheros, or fucking Harry Potter, but actual monsters. God, it was fun.
Hmmmm… what else.
Every year before going out trick or treating as a kid, I would read a handful of stories from the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark book series, just to get myself in the mood. It was always effective, and how! Holy fuck, those illustrations freak me out even today.
I don’t think that kids these days have experiences anything like the ones I had, and I think they’re poorer for it.
You know… I think I’m going to download some PDFs of the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books. Just for the memories.
And the chills.