The last several years in SAcramento, we’ve had to eat a lot of leftover candy.
We were warned by the inlaws that we’re right on the parade route, we’ll need lots of candy.
We burned through 5 fun-size candy bar bags in about 90 minutes. Wow.
Well, my wife did. I was at work.
sigh
I was at the hospital today, working the information desk, and this morning the daycare took the little ones through on a parade. Oh, were there ever some CUTE costumes! One little boy was dressed as a candle, with a paper flame on his head, and a white cardboard tube, with white rope “drips” hanging from his shoulders. A little girl in the cutest black and yellow bee/fairy costume. Tons of Disney princesses and Dorothys. And the little babies in their animal costumes!
Then there was the guy walking around dressed as I assume the Invisible Man. He made a mask out of masking tape, with sunglasses, fedora, trench coat, gloves, etc. Awesome looking, but extremely impractical-I can’t imagine how uncomfortable he’d be.
I was so disappointed… I got a little over twenty, which is slightly less than last year, and not too bad for a night that was intermittently rainy - but the older kids were all sullen, most of them barely said a word, and a few didn’t have costumes.
There was one young teen dressed as a girl, with someone that was either his younger teen brother or sister, I wasn’t really sure. Sort of odd.
Not one kid as cute as last year’s Bat-tyke, who proudly announced “I’m gonna be a Batman!”
Yeah, the zoo has an after hour event, three thousand people come in costume. Some really, really cute kid costumes. Being at the zoo, of course, it attracted what I imagine was a disproportionately high number of animal costumes. The infants in zippered goldfish getups were the best. Funny to see the dads kind of sheepishly costumed and dragged along on the family outing. I saw several dads visibly relieved to bump into other dads they knew and go off in clusters to share their misery.
Well, I’m surprised–in a good way. No rude little buggars, lots of thank yous, and even a God bless you.
I have only three pieces of candy left, and that was after bringing out the spare bag.
You poor dopers. You’re just grouchy because you didn’t get to see my three year old tonight. She was wearing the cutest Snow White costume complete with red hair bow in her blond curls and matching sparkly red shoes. She said please and thank you in a high pitched voice that would make anyone smile. She only took one piece of candy even when prompted to take more.
For an hour and a half we made grandmothers squeal with delight. We made teenaged girls beg to babysit. We even prompted one woman to take pictures. People couldn’t give us candy fast enough.
The rest of the trick or treaters weren’t quite as adorable as my sweetie pie but they were polite and well behaved. Two of them showed up not only to collect treats but to collect for UNICEF.
I really love this neighborhood.
We didn’t get a single kid. And I live in a small, quiet neighborhood, so I was expecting them. I went out to dance rehearsal, and I saw all the kids on the main street a couple of blocks away, so that’s where they must have all gone. But dayum, Main Street in Cohoes doesn’t look friendly to me.
I also saw what looked either like two 8 YO kids or two midgets walking alone. No parents. That didn’t make me too happy.
I’ve lived in my house for three years. The first year, I was just like you. Hubby and I went out and bought a huge supply of what he terms “the GOOD candy”* I put a comfy chair on the porch with a table on which to set the giant bowl of candy and waited eagerly. We live right downtown, so I figured we’d get tons of trick-or-treaters.
Man, was I dissapointed. We got maybe seven or eight kids who stopped by. I gave them all large fistfulls of the litttle chocolate bars 'cause I had visions of this giant bowl of candy sitting on my table until next Halloween.
The last two “customers” were a middle aged lady and a woman in her twenties. Neither were in costume. Both reached right into the bowl without being prompted and helped themselves to a fistfull. (The older lady actually did sort of a scrunching thing with her hand, trying to fit more in.) They stuffed it into their purses, and handed me a tract which decried the evils of Halloween. I was so flabbergasted that I didn’t even have the presence of mind to holler after them: “Halloween is evil, but you don’t mind eating the Devil’s candy, huh?”
I just turned off the porch light for the last two years, not even bothering. I’ve since learned that all of the neighborhood parents drive their kids to the McMansion developments in the 'burbs. The sociologist in me says there’s a paper in that somewhere . . .
We had a pretty good time this year. Decent costumes, generally polite kids, ok turnout. I think all of them said thank you and/or Happy Halloween, and most of them were unprompted by parents. A few didn’t say “trick or treat” until I mock-threateningly said “say it!” (Made one kid’s mom laugh…) but that didn’t bug me. Even the older kids generally had decent costumes. My favorite was a boy who looked around 14, wearing antennae, ladybug wings, and a painted-on beard, who told us he was “a manlybug”. Our cat was briefly chased away by a tiny, enthusiastic Batman who wanted to SEE THE KITTY, but that was just cute.
Oh! We did have one older girl with a totally half-assed costume. (A cross necklace alone does not make you Buffy the Vampire Slayer!) Rather than candy, she got a packet of soy sauce. 
I was delegated to be the official Halloween Hander-Outer this year, but we only had 16 trick-or-treaters. All of them were polite, said thank you, and I even got a “Happy Halloween” or two. One kid even apologized for his costume, saying he didn’t have much time to get ready. I told him it was fabulous. He was a shotgun serial killer…I think. I live in the St. Louis area like sinjin, but I didn’t hear any jokes or riddles.
But all in all, everyone enjoyed receiving their Chick tracts.
For the first time in six years, I have a front door, so we had Halloween which for me was a new experience (i.e. being co-host myself). We didn’t really have time to get any decorations or anything ready, so I gamely sat out on the balcony (second-story front door apartment, what we call a triplex in Montreal) with the table and the candy.
We did have a problem which is there’s no real word for “trick or treat” in French. The most usual phrase was “Des bonbons s’il vous plaît !” in a little singsong, which is okay. Then there was the one girl who came and just stared; I did the little hand-wavey prompt thing, and she just looked kind of baffled and embarrassed and ran through a few possibilities ("… merci? … joyeux Halloween?") before I gave up and gave her candy. Whatever. Next year we go all out with the pumpkin and the scarecrow body hanging from the balcony, though.
And then I put on my slutty-headmaster costume and went out for the grownup fun at Cabaret Mado, I cruised a sailor and will be having coffee next week. 
(Weird dialectological note: in Winnipeg most of the kids said “Halloween Apples!” instead of “Trick or treat,” for some reason.)
“Chick tracts.” Bwaaa-ha-haha-haha! Funny stuff, PixieSnix. Here, have some candy.
My Halloween was spent at work (Boardwalk Bakery at Walt Disney World). We set up five tables just outside of the Boardwalk Inn and spread out 15 pastry bags (per table) filled with orange, black, white and green icing, along with some Halloween-themed sprinkles and Reese’s Pieces. We were handing out pumpkin-shaped shortbread cookies to anyone who came by; most folks took advantage of our decorating set-up and had minutes of fun icing and garnishing their own cookies. The kids were 100% polite & cute, as were the parents. It was a great experience, just giving people free sweets and seeing their faces light up.
My beloved wife stayed home and placed a bowl filled with Dots and Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse Table Mints (she works in the Corporate Office) outside. Kiddies could just come up and take what they wanted. Apparently our honor system worked, because we have 3/4 of a bowl of that nasty candy left over.
Earlier in the week, I spread a message of hope and joy to the neighborhood younglings by telling them "When you get older, you can save some money from work and buy bags and bags of your own candy - and you can get GOOD
Uh…
…you can get GOOD candy instead of nasty peanut butter taffy or Steakhouse mints.
“Sorry guys, but representative Mark Foley isn’t in at the moment. Try back later.”
I think you have the beginnings of a great porn film there (just make sure they’re really 18).
We had barely a handful of ToTers last night, but they were all pretty nice…I held out the bowl of various candy bars and said pick one and they did. All except the kid who was too young to know better and went in with both hands but he was so cute I let him go to town.
We live on a dead-end street, and for the last threyears have gotten a grand total of one trick-or-treater. Last night we didn’t even bother: we just put on our costumes (my wife in a lovely cowgirl outfit, me in everyone else’s costume) and went to two different places.
First we went to WEst Asheville, which we’d heard was ToT central–and boy howdy! One house had Nosferatu playing on a screen; another had Charlie and the Chocolate Factory going. There were smoke machines, people hiding in full-size coffins to jump out at kids, huge inflatable lit monsters, and more. And, of course, tons of kids. No wonder we don’t get any ToTers!
Then we went downtown to the local goth club. Lots of folks in fairy costumes.
It was a pretty good night.
Daniel
We had about 25 kids, between the ones I saw at the door and the ones my wife saw when I had our kids out ToT’ing. I’d say about 1/3 of them actually said Trick or Treat, and about 2/3 said Thank You.
About 40 minutes after the last kid came to the door, the bell rang. I grabbed the bowl, opened the door, and was met with 6 teenage girls dressed as what I can only describe as Sexy Construction Workers. Daisy Dukes cutoffs, white tank top, flannel shirt open and tied under the boobs, tool belt, hard hat. Quite a change from the 3-10 year olds I had seen up until that point.
And I know I’m getting old, since my first thought as a lecherous old man was -excellent! Neighborhood girls at the perfect age to babysit my kids!
Our TOT was Sunday, from 3-5 PM. (Don’t ask, I live in the US’s most fucked-up town). Our porch light doesn’t work, so we had a sign on the front porch and a tap light hanging up outside (we learned from last year). I was hoping to dress my kid up in his pumpkin costume and answer the door with him (hey, it was free, even if it’s unoriginal), but he slept through most of the two hours. No wonder, it’s his usual naptime :rolleyes: .
We bought several bags of the GOOD candy - Nestle Crunch (three kinds), Hershey bars, Reese’s, Milky Ways, etc. ALL good candy.
We had about 25 kids. TOTAL. In two hours. Three teenagers who weren’t in costume. Several little kids who were too small to understand TOT. Two older girls (tweens, maybe?) who were extremely polite, said TOT, and then gave me a huge thank you when I dumped most of my leftover candy into their bags (it was the end of TOT).
My new rules for next year:
No costume? You get raisins.
Older than 14? You get raisins.
You don’t say Trick or Treat? You get raisins.
Of course, now I think we’re just going to say fuck it all and go to my parents’ for the week, since they have a NORMAL Trick or Treat on October 31st, like normal towns.
Bravo!
Btw, I noticed that someone in my neighborhood must have been giving them out, but fortunately it was one of the more innocuous ones.
I had nice polite kids- the best costumes- an adorable toddler dressed as Elmo, one kid dressed as STRONG BAD!!! (I told him how cool that was), a pre-teen girl who said she was a pirate when I asked if she was supposed to be The Black Dahlia (she was in a black dress & hat, with a make-up dots around her eyes looking like a veil, a slash mark across her throat & a red sash around her waste- I think I was right & she was just embarrassed), and a 9yo Snow White who nicely but hurridly explained why she was worn out as her costume’s shoes made it difficult to walk up steep driveways (which I have).
Well, Hell, I guess I just popped my kid and I in via a DeLorean from the 1950s. I had my kid out last night and he said ‘TrT’ and ‘Thank You’. Sure he got intimidated a few times by homeowners he didn’t know who got into his personal space a tad too fast, but he’s 9 and has the right to be a little shy at 9. I watched him from the street and if he ever forgot a ‘thank you’, I prompted him. Its funny because I remember clearly hearing him say loudly “Cool! A Candy Eyeball!” and “Wow! Starbursts!!!” as well as “AirHeads! Awesome!!!”
There were other quotes from last night too, like “Its a bowl, Daddy. Don’t worry, I’m only taking One” and “Wow…look at that Pumpkin! That’s Cool!”
He always waited until we were between houses that had all their lights out to say things like “Chocolate again…I guess Mommy gets that one” and “That last house had money. Daddy, I don’t like taking money from people. It just feels wrong.” (Kid, you just got My vote.)
He was there with me when we passed one house two blocks back where the owner had just found a note left in his candy bowl…a pre-printed diatribe of four letter words, some misspelled, about how and why the kids took all his candy from the bowl he had put out. To make matters worse, he hadn’t lit his jack-o-lanterns yet and these kids had dumped small quantities of gasoline in them :eek: (thank Og he smelled it before he tried to light them).
That was the point when I thought to myself, “Gee, maybe sometimes my kid gets shy or needs to be prompted for a ‘thank you’, but in a world where some kids say ‘TrT’ with eggs, TP, soap, theft, snarky notes and gasoline, he isn’t all that bad.”
Of course, the Scariest moment of the night was a few blocks away at another house where a woman came to the door and said to him “Are you here all by yourself? she does a quick look around, but doesn’t see me Are you here all alone?” (It was dark, and while she couldn’t see me, but I could definitely see her.) It almost looked like she was starting to move to try to grab him into her house when my voice boomed out ‘Happy Halloween’ from the sidewalk. She turned white, threw some candy into his bag and shut the door quick.
(And to think, I almost wore a costume!)