Sunday, October 31, 2010

Mixed Blessings at Halloween

Ok, so, I live in a decent-sized neighborhood. Certainly, this neighborhood is rather much larger than the one I grew up in. There's also a fair number of families with children in this neighborhood. Yet, each year at Halloween, the number of trick-or-treaters that show up are rather low. Each year, there's more leftover candy than there is candy given out (we like to provide a variety, so we get a bunch of different candies). Invariably, you have a predictable progression: young/new parents with very young children for the first hour. Older (pre-teens) for the next hour. Teens, invariably not in costume, to close out the evening. Throughout, you also have the "drop-off" kids.

The "drop offs" are invariably kids from PG county. You can tell that they're from PG county by the license plates of the vehicles. I can only guess that they don't recognize/have Halloween in Maryland, as all of the drop-off vehicles seem to be MD-plated. Generally, you'll see them get dropped off at some corner, and then the driver of the vehicle speeds away at a speed WELL above what's prudent for the occasion or even just the speed limit. I guess it's ok to drop your kids off in the neighborhoods with the good candy and risk mowing down the kids that are already out.

Overall, Halloween is such a non-occasion. It seems that the only people that really go out for Halloween are the adults with the various Friday and Saturday night drunken-slutfests ("ho ho ho" isn't so much what Santa says at Christmas but what you can point and say as you watch the parade of "I only feel like I can get away with dressing this way one time of year" tartlets.

Now, as a man, I certainly appreciate the eye candy. So, I'm not using "ho" or "slut" in a pejorative sense. It's more an expression of frustration at the whole state of affairs where Halloween is way more for adults than it is for kids. It's just "lame" (to borrow a term from when Halloween still seemed to be popular with the pre-adult set).

No comments:

Post a Comment