5:59 p.m.
Emily: “I bet we don’t even get any Halloweeners. Seriously, if we don’t get any Halloweeners I’m going to feel like a Halloweenie.”
Adam: “I’m sure we’ll get a few.”
Emily: “If we don’t get any I’m going to be devastated. And then I’m going to eat all of this candy myself.”
6:02 p.m.
Emily: “Did you see that little fat, kid, he took like three at a time! Next year, I’m handing out dried apricots. I had better go get some more Skittles.”
And so it went for about an hour, in which we treated:
1 wolf man
1 Michael Myers
1 bloody surgeon (he looked like he was from the band Clinic)
1 Superman
1 Supergirl
2 Dark Knights
2 skeletons
1 Iron Man (kid probably got last year’s hand-me-down)
1 puppy
1 Ninja turtle, Michelangelo (orange headband)
2 samurais
1 zombie bride (an 8-yr-old girl in the best costume of the evening)
3 princesses (yawn)
3 high school theatre nerds who said they were getting a lot of nasty door openers
7 ambiguously dressed kids who parents don’t know how to put together a costume or who forgot what night it was
Do not be hating on the princesses, you know your mom has snaps of you as a princess for Halloween like three years running.
Not to be too argumentative — princesses are cute — but my mom never let us go as anything that wasn’t related to the darker side of Halloween. That meant no superheroes, no occupations, and yes, no princesses. Except that one time she let me go as Smurfette. Does she count as a princess?
So did the High Schoolers seem to understand “why” that were getting mean door openers? YOU’RE IN HIGH SCHOOL! It’s great that you dress up, super even, now take your dressed up self to a party with other high schoolers and leave the trick ‘r treating to the kids…
I’m not sure. I kind of loved them — these big, Rennaissance Faire-worthy high school theatre nerds. They were obnoxious in the way that theatre nerds can be when they are amongst themselves.
We had that age old conversation — when is it too old to stop trick-or-treating — in my living room a couple of minutes later. As a 13-year-old, I didn’t understand the cut off point. I totally get it now, though. Little Superman isn’t going to egg your house, a 16-year-old just might.
I personally didn’t mind handing out candy to them. But without thinking, I didn’t even let them choose Snickers or Skittles for themselves.
Guess I sounded like a bit of a scrooge there. Didn’t mean to. Again, I do think it’s great that they dress up. I just personally feel the trick-or-treating element really is for the kids. When you’re a kid there is something exciting about getting out there and collecting your “stash” once a year.
When your older it’s more about the dressing up and having fun with really pulling it together, which I’m sure your theatre nerds totally did. But for me, when I have four 16 year old clean out my bowl before the 7 year olds even get there… it’s frustrating.
No, I agree. But we did have a lot of leftover candy, and I definitely don’t have the energy these days to consume all those calories anyway.
Someone told me that many kids around here go to the mall instead of the neighborhoods. I threw up a little when I heard that.
The Mall? Seriously? Wow, I had no idea. I suddenly feel like I now know one of Salem’s dark secrets. The Mall.
I’m usually anti-mall, too, but as a parent of a toddler I like having the downtown mall as an option. Most of my 10 Halloween nights in Salem have been either incredibly wet or cold (or both), so having a nice, dry place for kids to trick-or-treat is great.
Emily, I have to share with you my fondest DC Halloween memory. We had just moved into our new house and were excited about trick-or-treaters, as we had previously lived in an apartment building. We only received a few kids, and one of the groups included a grandma, a little girl about six years old and a toddler boy about two. I said to the little girl “oh, a princess!” and turned to the little boy, who was decked out in a pair of slacks, a 70s-looking shirt and button down vest, hat and cane, “hmmm, what are you?” I wondered aloud, whereupon the grandma says, “oh, he’s a pimp!” Alrighty then….I was speechless and had to quickly close the door to crack up. Needless to say, our Halloween this year didn’t include any two-year old pimps. Just a parade of superheros and dr. seuss characters.
When I was in D.C., living in respectable West Georgetown, we got not a single trick-or-treater. I would take a little pimp over that any day… much better story than a sad girl with a full bucket of candy and an empty doorstep.