Trick-or-Treaters

Where have all the good trick-or-treaters gone? Who is old enough to remember the good ol' days of trick-or-treating? We'd beg mom to let us get dressed by 5:00 in the evening and hit the town. Literally---we went all over town. We'd start in our neighborhood and fan out. Every light in the neighborhood was on--only scrooges (wrong holiday?) turned their lights out. Mom usually made homemade popcorn balls to give away. She made enough to last us for the rest of the week, too. There were lots of homemade things back then--but we hated getting cookies--the apples always smashed them. But seriously...who wanted an apple? There was also the little pieces of candy and gum, too. I don't remember which teacher in town did this, but she always gave out the big Hershey candy bars. We all knew where she lived and would beg dad to drive us across town to her house.
Do you remember why people quit giving the healthy stuff like apples---besides the fact that kids didn't like it? It was that first dadgum razor blade. MAN! Who did that? Then that first razor blade evolved into my kids having to take their candy through an xray machine to examine even candy!

I had both healthy and not-so-healthy treats tonight. Pretzels and the good stuff. I just had 2 twelve-ish-aged boys come to my door. I dropped the normal amount of candy & pretzels I've been giving out and they just stared down into their bag...as if to say, "That's it?" They looked back up at me and I wanted to yell, "Go trick-or-treating---door-to-door like I used to do! You are not entitled to a bag full of candy at your first street!" Kids! They don't want to work like I used to have to work for all that candy. And we didn't have the commercial costumes like they do now, either. We painted, draped, and made-do with what we had. And boy were we creative--we looked good!

What the heck has happened to good little trick-or-treaters? When did the world change? At almost 8:00, I've had a mere 25 little (and not so little) goblins show up at my door. I've had 2 adults stick their large pillowcases in my face wanting candy. Seriously?!? I can only assume they didn't have the money to go get candy for themselves and needed a chocolate fix. Why didn't they do what I did as a parent? Demand that the kids leave their candy downstairs for me to supervise so I could make sure they weren't eating at night---and pick out the good stuff for myself! I was pretty good at that even as a kid. My brothers didn't know how to guard their stash. Trust me. They didn't.

But my night was redeemed when this group showed up! Corbin and Bryson showed up with their parents. Bryson handed me his pumpkin after I'd filled it and told me he wanted to go play upstairs and wanted to know where my kids were. (Grandkids) He turned to his mom and told her he was spending the night. Don't you love his garden gnome outfit? He wasn't wearing his beard tonight like he did at the Fall Festival.

Corbin took off his mask and posed for me. He's too cool for words!

And Bryson was content playing with the toys he brought downstairs.

And Ember? Well, she gave me her Chinese pose....with the pumpkin. My lame Halloween was totally redeemed.