If being forced to give a piece of candy to poor kids is the biggest imposition that poverty has on your life, count your blessings. Suck up the $10 for an extra bag of candy and feel good that your giving kids who may have very few bright spots something to look forward to.
FWIW I was one of those kids from the projects (my mom didn’t encourage it, but I’d tag along with friends.) it wasn’t about candy-- even as a kid I didn’t have a sweet tooth-- it was about a rare chance to be out celebrating, after living in a place that sometimes wasn’t safe to play in even during daylight. If it makes you feel better, that exposure to a more affluent world probably fueled some of my ambition.
My advice, give out little boxes of raisans. Word will pass, very quickly, among the groups of teenagers, and the only ones that will ring your door bell will be of the reasonably polite variety. Some will even remember your house next year and after a few years you will be a legend among the teenagers (and probably the younger kids too). Once your house has become “the raisan house”, you will have much fewer, Halloween visitors.
There’s a street in town that is in an upper-middle class neighbohood, and it also does a Halloween block party with haunted houses and everything. Kids come from miles around (because parking is horrendous), usually walking hand-in-hand with parents. Many of them come from the housing project just a few blocks away.
I don’t live there, but I live close enough to see the kids on their way there. And it’s nice. It’s nice that the neighborhood opens up to everyone and it’s nice that the kids have something to look forward.
But it is an in-town neighborhood where they have the carnival. There are kids who live there, but not enough to make for a huge festival. So I can only guess that the community chooses to give this gift to everyone and that the participants (the homeowners) really get a hoot out of it.
We don’t get trick or treaters, but even if we did we wouldn’t be home. There’s a big party at the bar. There are prizes for best costume, sexiest, scariest, etc. Oh, and there’s beer.
Seriously,if you’re that upset, go out for the night and unwind.
Since 1973 we’ve been trying to reach Fat Heads. We’ll get to the other parts once we’re done.
Divide the candy bought by a few hundred children with a handful each. We usually buy no more than 5 lbs and anything left over is available at the coffee station at work the next day.
Between office staff and client visitors at reception, it goes.
I predict that on the night before Halloween, the OP will be visited by three spirits, that of Halloween Past, Present and Future, and will wake up with a sudden change of heart.
Than he’ll suck it up and not begrudge a couple poor kids a few dollars worth of fun-size Snickers. Jesus.
I would have no problem with kids from out of the neighborhood coming, personally. It provides them with a safe environment and an evening of fun. I don’t know if you ever tried trick-or-treating at an apartment complex when you were a kid, but I did and it sucked. The majority of people weren’t home or at least didn’t answer the door. If this is the case for the apartment-dwelling kids who come to your neighborhood, then they pretty much get cheated of the whole trick-or-treating experience if they stay on their side of the tracks.
The sign is a great idea. Un-costumed teenagers tend to tick me off as well. Now I don’t mind if the teenager is holding on to a younger kid in costume. (I once had a couple of teenagers show up as Darth Vader and Luke. They did a light saber fight on my porch that ended up with Luke’s hand getting cut off. I tried to fill their already overflowing bags with candy and they refused. They were just using the opportunity to show off their mad acting skills.)
Personally, I wish that Halloween was earlier in the year when its not so cold that the costumes are covered by jackets and coats. At least its warmer here than it was in Arizona.
Yeah, I know what the day means, but still…when all you see of the cute ballerina is her shoes and tiara…its rather disappointing for both of us. I buy candy so kids will knock on my door and show me their costumes and they want to show off.
I knew a guy in El Paso who would hand out single tootsie rolls to Mexicans instead of the good stuff. But he was a racist terror.
I wish those poor black kids would knock on my door. Nobody wants my candy
When I was a Grad-student, we lived in a neighborhood that was set aside for graduates and post-docs, and as a result was almost totally foreign students who weren’t familiar with Halloween. Since there were a lot of families with young children, My gf, a big Halloween enthusiast had loaded up on candy, ready to hand it out. When no one ended up coming to the door, she was reduced to yelling out the window at kids passing buy, trying to get them to come get some candy.
Judging by the horrified looks from various parents, I’m pretty sure she convinced the entire neighborhood we were some sort of weird pedophiles.
I’m gonna repeat the same story I always do when this subject comes up:
In my case, it had nothing to do with the size of my aunt’s neighborhood, although I’m not gonna lie – it was pretty cool. And yes, I got TONS of candy. However, the best part was going around with all of my cousins. It’s not nearly as much fun going by yourself, even if you do live in a big neighborhood. (Which is why our other two cousins came along).
And while I totally agree about teenagers who don’t wear costumes, as people have pointed out, they show up in every neighborhood, no matter if they live there or not. Like others have suggested: put up a “No Costume, No Candy” sign, pass out raisins, or if it really bugs you that much, or turn off your light, and don’t give out any.
As stated, my cousins and I got quite a haul and yet none of us were fat, not then, and not now either. If anything, I was downright scrawny as a kid. (Not bragging, I’m just stating a fact). Of course, my parents didn’t just let me gorge on all of it – my mom would dole it out piece by piece, usually in my school lunch or whatever, and it lasted a long time.
Where I come from, parents have become pretty good at designing costumes that go over one’s coats, or figuring out ways to stay warm underneath that don’t involve coats. (I can’t count how many layers of tights and turtlenecks I used to wear under a cat costume!) Besides, most of the time you got so warm running from house to house, that coat would be off in a jiffy!
This is how I remember it from when I was a kid, and I have observed the same in adulthood. And it’s definitely not limited to certain races or apartment dwellers.
I sorta understand the thing with not wanting to hand out candy to older kids not in costumers, but I do anyway.
I remember when I was told I was “too old” by several people, when I was 12 in 1990. I had a costume, though I was mostly going so I could take my little brother. I was probably near the lower end of average physical development, too. I wasn’t one of the 12 year boys with mustaches going to orgies. I was about 5’ even and 100 pounds. I’m 36 now and look about 15 clean-shaven. So, the acceptable age limits must have been pretty low.
Yea, the point is to have fun. As long as people are having fun, I don’t really waste a lot of thought cycles on whether they’re trick or treating “wrong”. Some people seem to get weirdly intense about who they give candy to, like they’re doing the world a gigantic favor by participating.
After all, at the end of the day, I’m giving each kid like a nickel worth of candy. Its not some super-awesome gift that only the just and worthy may receive.
How is this different from the small farm town where I grew up? The kids from out in the country would come to town to ToT because the houses were within walking distance of each other, their school friends were there and, duh!, candy. Never mind that their parents weren’t hosting ToTers, they were friends and classmates.
Chances are tha any of the house kids who are enrolled in public school attend with the apartment kids. They are your neighbors. They are kids. Show some class.
Have you considered using this as an opportunity to do something good for the apartment kids? Maybe hand out snack sized bags of pretzels, almonds, or GoGo Squeez apple sauce. Or you could hand out coloring books. Some of these even have really good messages…fire prevention tips, anti-bullying messages, etc.
For teenagers almonds or pretzels or whatever would be just fine, though not exactly what they are looking for. For younger kids the coloring book thing would probably be a good idea. If nothing else you’ve given a healthy snack to the kids and maybe next year they will leave you the hell alone because they remember you as “almond guy”. If you are willing to throw some money at the situation (which I’d guess you aren’t, since the cost of the candy is apparently an issue) Target has a bunch of classic books for $1 that would be good for the teenagers in the dollar section of the store. Giving the kids something the might not be getting elsewhere like books or healthy snacks would be a really good way to feel better about the people who “expect me to foot the bill for your kids’ halloween candy when you don’t even live in my neighborhood!”
One problem I’ve seen are the inner city kids being dropped off by a parent and then the parents leave, the kids do the neighborhood, and are stuck sitting on a curb waiting for their parents. You feel sorry for them but its not like you can take them into your home.
Sometimes they bring out a bunch of kids in a van.
Back to the OP, in our area the rule is if you want to participate, you leave your porch light on. If not, the kids know to go to the next house. Plus it’s generally over by 8. Any kid out as late as you say would find no open houses and might get the cops called.
But then, we live in Kansas, you in Dallas and the nights dont get cold so I can see kids being out later at night.
