Shortly I will be headed out to the yearly candy gathering event. This year the edge of hurricane Sandy will be providing us with endless rain, special delivery. Thankfully a couple of days of grey, rainy weather is all we seem likely to suffer from so I should probably be extremely grateful; New Yorkers are dealing with collapsing buildings, flooded subways, and massive power outages. I found it hilarious that a report on the devastation in New York concluded with a picture of the suffering Toronto has endured... a car that got hit by a tree. One car, one tree. (It wasn't Hobo's car, which is perhaps a first for him.) This year, like every year so far, Elli will be going out as a princess. I would love to see her do something else, anything else, but I feel like it would be exceedingly silly for me to try to twist her arm just so I can go buy her extra stuff she will only use once.
Hallowe'en really brings out the humbug in me. I see all kinds of people dressed up in crazy unique costumes and have no interest whatsoever in doing so myself. It all sounds like an awful lot of work for very little gain. I spend much of my life wandering around looking bizarre and getting all kinds of strange glances and it would seem I have no desire to do so on the one day of the year when it is socially accepted.
It isn't *just* the lack of desire to dress up that gets my goat though. It drives me nuts that people give out so much complete crap to kids when better alternatives are not allowed. If you try to give out tasty but even marginally healthy things like homemade cookies they will be thrown out right away even though the one person on the street handing out said cookies is guaranteed to be the one person who can't poison any children. When they find poison in a Mars bar who do they prosecute? Who knows? When they find a homemade cookie there is only one person to look up! That is all entirely aside from the problem that random people poisoning children with homemade Hallowe'en treats is entirely fictional.
We need a lot more of people lowering their inhibitions and relaxing clothing norms while wandering the streets together at night and a lot less 'Jam those kids fully of Nestle products'! Is my old and cranky showing?
Yes, you crank. What about running around after dark? Dashing through a cemetery? All exciting stuff for a kid. Just help her eat the candy like I used to do for you. Now you see that I was actually HELPING, no stealing.
ReplyDeleteHooray for my car still being intact!
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