I bought my ‘usual’ four bags of those mini-sized candy bars.
I have three and a half bags left over. (This is dangerous!)
No exageration – I only had TWO ‘clumps’ of kids ring the doorbell, a total of eight children, and two of them didn’t want candy.
Understand, I live in an ordinary suburban town, in a ‘nice’ neighborhood which is a sort of maze of dead end streets. Ten or more years ago we had tons of children come because parents would drive them to our neighborhood instead of trick or treating on busy roads/places without sidewalks/dangerous seeming houses…
And now this. What’s happened? Two theories:
Halloween is becoming more party oriented, and all the kids are at chuch/school/friends parties.
Some parents are so worried about the swine flu they don’t want the kids out exposed to a whole new bunch of (semi)strangers.
Ideas?
Oh, and my husband insists that one place he trick or treated as a child the thing to do was NOT say ‘Trick or Treat’ but rather ‘Halloweeners!’ Unfortunately he doesn’t remember what part of the country this was, and as an Army brat he lived all over the place. Anyone heard of this?
Now, what shall I do with a ton of little candy bars? :smack:
One thing I’ve noticed is that as the makeup of the neighborhood changes, the trick or treating changes. The kids who just a few years ago had Mom and Dad drive them to your neighborhood have outgrown that - and the new generation of Moms and Dads take their kids somewhere else. And also, that as the kids in the neighborhood grow up, more and more houses are dark - so the neighborhood gets less productive and the “candy farmers” move on to more productive neighborhoods. The “perfect street” in our neighborhood of five years ago is now half dark - but a quarter mile away a new perfect street has appeared.
I think I had maybe 20 kids tonight. Most of whom I didn’t recognize (we have a lot of kids roaming the streets on bikes).
Our neighborhood is a nice, simple circle. No sidewalks but also no traffic. Some people might come here from outside…it’s not a bad place to come if you live in one of those places nearby where the houses are all spread out - but if you’re serious about wanting to maximize your candy, you go to the Big Neighborhood with lots and lots of houses.
We have more condominium neighborhoods around than we used to. I wonder if kids go there instead of here or the Big Neighborhood, because the yards are smaller/nonexistant.
I had more kids this year than last year. I wouldn’t say that swine flu was an issue.
From 6 - 7:30, we had a couple. From 7:30 - 8:30, little groups of three or four, steadily, and after 8:30 - nuthin’. I just turned off the porch light. Kind of disappointing, out here in the suburbs where you’d think there would be a whole lot more kids. It was chilly but it had stopped raining hours ago. Didn’t notice any memorable costumes, either.
Oh, well. I have a TON of candy left over, but what doesn’t migrate to the office will be put to good use here at home :).
We had 35. We had several groups of kids in no costumes, even little kids! We didn’t have any no-costume teenagers, who I don’t give candy to - what we had was one group with little toddlers where the MOM HELD OUT HER CANDY BAG TOO. God, I was so pissed. I threw a peanut butter cup in - I would have told her where she could peddle her shit but I didn’t want to in front of her kids. Grrr.
But we did have two or three big groups in homemade costumes, very polite and cute.
6:51 PM here and so far none. I’ve got several bags of candy and the apt is set up quite nicely for Halloween. I hoped some of the kids that lived here would come by.
I had maybe 10 kids distributed over six doorbell rings. I only recognized one of them – a Cub Scout who knocked on my door a couple of evenings ago selling popcorn. (Don’t know his name, but he comes every year and I always buy from him.)
It was mostly little kids, who were so shy they couldn’t manage to say “Trick or treat.”
It’s only been in the past few years that we’ve had enough kids in our neighborhood to have trick-or-treat. My son always had to go to his friends’ houses to trick-or-treat.
The kids are in charge of the trick-or-treat thing. We’ve been through two big bags of candy and had to buy extra. The boy set up a fog machine on the front porch. They turn in on when someone knocks. It’s been a big success.
My husband reports that we had none, but the area where I took my daughter (in the same neighborhood) had a decent amount of kids out and about. My cousin’s house, which is two streets over from mine, ran out of candy. I think the problem with our area is that we live in a townhome in a complex that isn’t close to any other houses. Not many kids live here, either.
We have had quite a few. Most of whom are very young children from the neighborhood. Fortunately we have only had two beggars, what I call the kids who are not in costume. It pains me to give them anything but I figure a single piece of candy is worth my house not getting egged.
We only had maybe a dozen doorbell rings, but they were big groups of kids so we got rid of most of the candy. Our dog has been a nervous wreck all evening.
I’ll never forget our first Halloween in our first house. The neighborhood was small and isolated, so we only bought a little bit of candy. None of the neighbors had bothered to warn us that on Halloween night people literally brought in truckloads of kids from further out in the county. The place was mobbed and we ran out of candy in minutes.
I always have a mix of candy, and too much of it, so I hold out the bowl and let the kids pick what they want.
The first two kids who came to the door were about age 12, two boys. They both went to grab HANDFULS of candy. I mean like 6-7 apiece! I almost said “no fucking way, you little assholes!” but luckilly it came out as “woah woah woah…just one, sheesh!”
175 kids so far. We ran out of candy and had to go and I had to go get more about an hour ago. The grocery store was pretty much sold out. Probably spent about $40 on candy this year and it is pretty much all gone.
I’m in a fairly quiet area. My first was a single at 6:30, then a few clumps of kids over the next hour or two. One of them included someone who I would normally have considered too old, but I figured he was supervising the kids so I gave him some candy two. The last ones I had were a cute girl of about 8 who was wearing a black leotard and a big pair of bunny ears, with matching makeup, and then a boy and a girl who looked about five. Nobody came by after 9, and at 10 I turned off the lights.
