Saturday 31 October 2020

Halloween 2020

So, this is Halloween 2020. We are about an hour away from the time that the Ghosts,  Goblins, clowns, princesses, tramps and any number of scary, horrifying creatures come knocking on the door crying out TRICK OR TREAT and here in the west they will sometimes call out HALLOWEEN APPLES! That must be a holdover from when we trusted our neighbours not to put needles in apples or poison in the candy. The good old days.

 

Louise and I aren’t sure how many kids or if there will be any at all come knocking this year. I don’t think I would send the kids out to strangers homes for candy. The mayor said a week or two ago that Halloween will go on as per usual but cautioned parents and kids to practice social distancing and to wear masks. We will see how much weight that the mayor has with kids on sugar highs or kids that want to be on sugar highs.

 

I don’t think that a global pandemic would have stopped me and my friends from going out in search of candy when I was the right age. Mind you, we didn’t have as much candy on a regular basis as the kids do today. We just didn’t have the disposable income and being raised by parents who went through the Great Depression and the hardships of the second world war we were lucky to get anything sweeter than raisins. It wasn’t that bad, but we sure enjoyed free candy, even those hard toffees that were so sticky you thought that your teeth would pull out of your mouth when you ate them. They were the last candy left so you really didn’t have any choice. Even your big brother wouldn’t steal those candies.

 

So, I am waiting…waiting…waiting to see how much candy Louise and I will be “forced” to eat in the aftermath of the night. We just had our first two Princesses and I will finish this after the witching hour is over…

 

Okay, the final count is in. We had about 31 kids come to the door in costume and a few cute kids that didn’t seem to quite understand the concept but got candy anyways of course. We had about ten high school kids who were probably looking for free munchies to take to a party. They got candy as well, but they received the “lesser” candy, the stuff I would prefer not to eat. All in all this year wasn’t a lot different than the last few years have been. We live in a neighbourhood that is just starting to transition from older folks like us who are in the majority and younger folks that have moved in with young kids. Too soon the young families will be in the majority and the cycle will begin again.

 

Maybe next year we can all be a little more normal than this year and get back to not being concerned about how we hand out our candy.

1 comment:

  1. That's funny as we had 31 kids also, we only have two families on our street with kids. Everyone else is retired and the neighboring streets are much the same, so you know the kids came from far and away to get candy! We always buy the large size candy from Costco etc. so the word has got around I'm guessing. Linda used the long BBQ tongs to hand out the candy safely. B

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