Saturday, October 15, 2011

Forget the Tricks, We’ve Got the Treats

We’re ready for the hordes of kids that miraculously might appear at our front stoop on Halloween demanding a treat – a bribe – so they won’t have to play a trick on us.
Ah, who’m I kidding? We haven’t had any Trick or Treaters come to our door in a long time. If you’re wondering how long, I just figured out they stopped coming around the time my eldest son outgrew the custom – 1981, if you can believe that.
Thirty years. Thirty years since I’ve seen a costumed kid grace our doorstep carrying a pumpkin flashlight, with his/her parents hovering in the background watching to see if their little kids remember the right words to say with the right inflection that they’ve practiced for so long.
Thirty years. But the wife remains the eternal optimist and buys treats every year, sometimes even putting them in special Halloween goody bags.
This year, she spent $7.50 at Costco the other day to buy a huge jar containing 70 bags of pumpkin-shaped pretzels. She IS ready for Halloween.
Futile effort? Maybe, but she’s got that covered. We do have a bunch of kids in the neighborhood, replacing the ones that (like my sons) grew too old to mess with kiddy things like blackmailing the kind neighbor folks and demanding sweets.
The wife plans to hand-deliver these pretzels and other blackmail payments personally.
Kind of pitiful, huh? Oh well, if it makes her happy, who am I to argue.

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