Trick or Treating - Jerry Springer Style

Brett's Pumpkin.













Megan's Pumpkin













So this Halloween, we decorated far more than we ever had. This wasn't driven by some desire to really "do up" the holiday, but rather, I have, each year, become increasingly annoyed with the kids that run from door-across-the-lawn-to-door. The sidewalks around here go straight out the front door to the street. So the logical path of well mannered kids is from the door, down the sidewalk, down the street, down the next sidewalk, to the next door. Our sidewalk is lined with flower beds. There are spaces to sneak through them built into the design, but they certainly aren't obvious to the sugar-crazed kids stampeding around in the dark. So this year, we waited until Walmart had orange and purple lights on sale, and bought a couple strings. I put some stakes in the ground to mark off appropriate paths, and now our azealas still have the same number of branches after Tuesday than they did before. It's amazing. :)

With all the decorations, I thought we'd get swamped with Trick or Treaters. I mean, if I were ToTing, I would assume that people who put up orange and purple lights would also have good candy (which we did). The night started later than usual, but the number of small herds of wild creatures was increasing to a peak when suddenly, a woman started screaming in our front yard. We stopped what we were doing and listened, to make sure everyone was ok. Well, everyone was...sort of. The screaming was intense and frankly, scary. My first thought was "oh no, someone's been hit by a car". I reached for the phone to call 911. Then I heard what the screaming was about. A woman was ToTing with her 3rd grade-ish son and her 2 year old daughter. The son was excited about the festivities, and had ran ahead to our sidewalk (it was his first house he was going to hit). The mother thought that extreme verbal abuse was the way to deal with the child for his insensitivity to his toddler sister's leg length. Yes. You read that right. She was having a one-sided throw down with a 9 year old because he got excited and left her to walk with her 2 year old up the hill to our house. The child was sobbing during all this and finally his mom insisted he go take his tear streaked face up to our door and get some "#$@*# !#%#* candy!" Bless his heart. The kid had literally messed himself. It was horrible. I gave him some extra candy, since I figured ours would be the only door he'd go to all night. Needless to say, NO ONE would come NEAR our house for a half an hour after that (the houses are tightly packed and kids 2 blocks away identified what corner the screaming was coming from). It was like we had been infected with the plague. We watched hordes of kids come towards our end of the block, then do an abrupt about face.

In the end, we were happy to give extra candy to anyone who bothered to come to the door. This included more than one group of high schoolers. I actually gave candy to a guy with a mustache. A real one. Not even peach fuzz! And I'm so ok with that if they're escorting little kids, but these were honest-to-God groups of 17 year olds out for free candy. Then again, when a masked kid with a baritone voice says "trick or treat", I think I take the threat of the trick part more seriously. :)