Probably about 40-50 kids total. Mostly younger kids, usually traveling with parents waiting by the street. Only a couple no-effort teenagers (I don’t really care, but usually there’s more of them).
Glurgey as it is, the kid I remember best was a 4-5 year old kid in a wheelchair and dressed in a suit with a “Pat Sajak” name sticker. I have no idea if the kid was actually a Pat Sajak or “Wheel of Fortune” fan but that seems like an exceptionally random costume for the parents to come up with (versus dressing him as Spider-Man or something) so I like to assume he was.
I saw a little girl dressed in a yellow smiley face and saw a glimpse of red in the corner which immediately made me think of The Comedian from Watchmen but was, disappointingly, only a bow.
Oh, that reminds me. I also had a girl dressed as Ms Pac-Man with three brothers (?) dressed as ghosts.
None at my house. And I had to wait 45 minutes in a traffic backlog caused by huge numbers of kids descending on a neighborhood along the only road I can take home.
And worse, zero… none… not a scrap of discounted Halloween candy at the groceries today. I am SERIOUSLY disappointed. Where did all the candy corn go? The Reese’s Cup pumpkins? The mix bag of Smarties, Tootsie Rolls, and hard candies? The shelves were overflowing yesterday. Surely there is something left they need to mark down!
I work in a store owned by Hassidic Jews, on the town’s main street which traditionally has stores giving out candy to trick or treaters. Since they have a strict policy against Halloween, I spent four hours standing outside giving out candy to passing by treat or treaters.
The absolutely best costume was a girl who had turned a yellow poncho, pants and sneakers and a white pullover and mask into a banana.
I was the supervising parent with my 2 children and 2 of their friends. My oldest was dressed as a shiny Umbreon. I don’t think anyone knew what her costume was. Her friend had a morph suit printed with a skeleton. The younger two had coordinated to both be cats.
At one house, in addition to candy, the owner had a bowl of toys she let them pick from. I was hysterically laughing as one child picked a Rock! Really, a rock with google eyes glued on. She had never seen the Charlie Brown Halloween special, so didn’t understand why getting a rock was so funny.
Zero - fifth or sixth year in a row, IIRC. It helps to live at the end of a row of townhouses that itself has its only access road halfway up a hill. There are kids in the vicinity (I have seen them in the houses on the same road when I drive home from work, and heard a number of them in the row above mine on Halloween night); I have a feeling the no-shows are a combination of (a) my town has one of those “drive to the local school parking lot and give out candy from your trunk” things, and (b) some of the kids might have been told that some of the people who live there are, for lack of a better way of putting it, not the kind of people you want to knock on their doors at night. Oh, well - more candy for me (I got a big bag of Butterfingers / Nestle Crunch / 100 Grand bars).
Speaking of which, what do you do on Halloween when you have “house duty”? I spent mine watching some of the old Simpsons Halloween Specials.
And here’s a trivia question for you: who gets the most Halloween candy every year?
Lucy, Violet, and Patty (the original - not Peppermint Patty) from Peanuts. In reality, a considerable number of kids (and possibly a few adults as well) send in candy to their local TV stations and newspapers “for Charlie Brown,” but I believe that all of it actually ends up going to the three girls because they’re who they are and Charlie Brown is who he is. Actually, there is a Peanuts strip where Charlie Brown offers Violet one of his two candy bars, and she says, “One isn’t enough, Charlie Brown; I want both of them!” - and he promptly delivers.
This is our first year in over a decade that we didn’t have to hide in the dark. We miss our Mojo most nights but Halloween is not one of them. He was terrified of costumes and the one time we tried to give out candy by sitting on the porch he shook for 3 days. Costumed kids are apparently more threatening than anyone.
Most fun: Three 12/13 yr old girls who sang a made up Happy Halloween song instead of saying Trick or Treat
Most amazing: My neighbour who brought her 2yr old over. The same neighbour who gave birth Oct 29th. (She only did a couple houses, her husband did the rest)
Still pretty quiet in our neighborhood, we have a lot of candy left over but it looked busier than last year (I went out and delivered candy to our favorite kids since we couldn’t have them come to the door)
Sorry about Mojo (he was a K9?). There are a lot of dogs out there that need homes (hint, hint). When the time is right, you’ll know what to do. They don’t all fear Oct. 31; my two sat in the master bedroom window, yelling at ToTers for about a half hour, then dozed off on the bed. The little turds.
Last year the store greatly overextended themselves on both Christmas and Halloween candy. I go for groceries today, we’ll see what’s left after a week.
For the first time I did not buy a bag of candy…I had some caramels in the house and there is always the money standby. Dump a bunch of change in the bag. If anyone would have stopped I would have done both!
I would have loved to see all the dressed up kids! I have to remember next year that I should head up town to where they have church parties and such.
