By Kelli Bowen
Here comes Halloween! Last year, due to the tail-end of quarantining, my children missed Halloween and we don’t get trick-or-treaters living out where we were in the country, so for the past 6 years we haven’t had trick-or-treaters. The seven years before that, we maybe would get 10-20 kids depending on the year. It didn’t help trick-or-treater traffic that our door faced the alley and not the street. Last year we knew that we were moving to the house we live in now. Our house happens to be in the neighborhood where are children have always gone trick-or-treating. In fact, I have a photo from a few years ago of Miss A running in her Halloween costume towards our now-house.
As I was chatting with one of my now-neighbors she told me that we’d better prepare! Last year, during Covid Halloween, they had gotten right around 200 trick-or-treaters! If you add up all of the trick-or-treaters Hubby and I have had in the past 20 years it wouldn’t equal HALF of that. It’s time to stock up.
I have been slowly building up a candy stockpile in preparation for the flood of fire-fighters, peppering of PJ Masks, the deluge of demons, the varieties of vampires, the masses of mummies, the clusters of clowns, and the gangs of gargoyles and clumps of characters. But how do you plan for potentially hundreds of children?!?
I remember as a kid being turned out on one edge of town as my parents sat with the other parents on the other edge, probably having a few beers and smoking Virginia Slims, and waiting for us to reach the other end with our haul. We had one of two options for costumes:
A: the stinky plastic dress-costume with plastic face mask with holes punched for eyes, and maybe-just maybe, holes punched for a nose; or
B: homemade costume that probably looks great, but is embarrassing because Mom made it.
I remember never being cold. The adrenaline and sheer thrill of hitting as many houses as humanly possible pushed me on to even go to the sketchiest of houses, as long as the porch light was on.
When we’d get home, we’d inspect our haul. My sister and I would trade each other a candy for a candy to try to get the best variety in our orange plastic pumpkins. In my opinion the chocolate candy is, and always has been, the best, but my children seem to think that gummy and sour candy are better. They’d rather have sour patch kids and Swedish fish all day long. I have stocked up with assorted bags of all types of candy. I’ve been to the big box store a few times, grabbing an extra large variety bag each visit.
All I can do is cross my fingers and hope it’s enough. I’d hate to be that one house that turns their porch light off extra early while pretending not to be home. Good thing toilet paper is scarce and eggs are expensive, otherwise we might be treated to some 1993 Halloween justice.
Kelli makes her home in Cass County with her husband, two daughters (8 and 5) and two dogs. She works for a regional seed company by day and tries to be an alright mom, wife, friend and writer by night.
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