On...Halloween

        Halloween has come a long way. In the “Olden Days” –  you know, back when I was young - it was designed solely and exclusively for kids. Parents didn’t dress up, they didn’t decorate the house, outside or inside, and they certainly didn’t expend the equivalent of a mortgage payment on candy to dole out to the neighbor kids.

          Back then, moms baked up a batch of cookies or Saran-wrapped some homemade popcorn balls, and if those ran out before the last trick-or-treaters came by, then parents simply handed out apples.

          We lived in the country, in a 1901 farmhouse, smack in the middle of fifty-two acres. Needless to say, we didn’t get trick-or-treaters…except for one lone kid one year only. My father dashed to the fridge for an apple for him and, as he dropped it into the kid’s awaiting bag, his heart sank. Inside, my father saw at least ten other apples but not so much as even one cookie, piece of candy or popcorn ball.

          The kid gave my father a doleful look, said a dutiful “Thank you” and trudged away.

          Today’s families seem to go as all-out for Halloween as they do for Christmas. One of my piano families this year has thirty – count ‘em (I have) – THIRTY pumpkins of every imaginable size and shape in front of their house. Three have just this week been carved into Jack-o-lanterns. There’s also gargantuan blow-ups in every neighborhood these days and a proliferation of orange-and-black front-door wreaths, too.

         Garish is the goal, and everyone’s making it past the finish line with honors.

          And don’t get me started on costumes! Whereas the ones of yesteryear were flimsy and nylon, topped off with equally flimsy plastic-molded masks – the kind that suffocated us the whole night and pretty much obscured all visibility – today’s trick-or-treaters sport expensive, elaborate get-ups: lighted masks, inflatable costumes that simulate T-Rexes or King Kong and blood-and-gore make-up ad infinitum.

          At the risk of sounding like a fuddy-duddy, give me the simple, creative variety of costumes any day.

          One year, a teenage boy in our neighborhood wrapped tinfoil around his batting helmet, swim goggles and forearms then pinned a sheet of it to the back of his shirt and attached a tinfoil “F” onto the front of his chest. “TRICK OR TREAT FROM FOILMAN!” he declared at every house.

          I gave him extra candy. How could I not?

          Ditto for the four high school beauties in crowns and prom dresses whose sashes read: “Miss Understood,” “Miss Treated,” “Miss Trusted” and, my favorite, “Miss Creant.”

          My all-time favorite, though, was the cutie who looked to be about seven. She was wearing a vivid purple velour zipped-up hoodie and matching purple velour sweatpants. Over this ensembe was a sleeveless brown dress, and atop that, a square white tunic.

          “Trick or treat,” she said kind of glumly.

          I beamed at her and exclaimed, “Wait a minute! Are you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”

          Her eyes lit up and she gave me a million-watt smile. Then she turned to her mom and said triumphantly, “See? SHE gets it!”

          As she scampered to the next house, her mom whispered to me, “Thank you. You’re the only one all night who’s known what she was…and we’ve been out here an hour already.”

          In keeping with my philosophy about creative-is-better where costumes are concerned, I always made my daughter, Leah’s. I’m a sew-er, so her wish was my delight to make, and I always had them made weeks in advance.

          By contrast, the year she wanted to be a dalmatian, she went door-to-door with her BFF, who, in the twenty minutes before they left on their rounds, threw together a bride costume that consisted of a long-sleeved white blouse of her own, her mother’s fluffy-wide, frothy white ruffled summer skirt and a lace head scarf that had belonged to her grandmother.

          At every single house – no exceptions – this is what I heard:

Ding Dong

“Trick or treat!”

“Ohhhh, look! A BRIIIIIIIIDE!”

          Finally, after an hour or so, I hear this variation on that theme:

Ding Dong

“Trick or treat!”

“Ohhhh, look! A BRIIIIIIIIDE!”

[thoroughly disgruntled voice] “Yeah…uh…WOOF?”

          After we dropped her friend back home at the end of that night, Leah groused to me, “I am NEVER going trick-or-treating with a bride again for the rest of my life!”

          I’ve also noticed that trick-or-treaters seem to be getting younger and younger. The unspoken rule used to be that you couldn’t participate until you were in Kindergarten. Now, though, you seem to be eligible as long as you can walk.

          One teeny tiny princess toddled up to my doorstep, gave me an adorable baby-toothed smile, opened up her bag and said, “Tank you!”

          When I dropped the candy in, her smile got even bigger, and she said, “Twicka tweat!”

          Right words; wrong order. Memorable forever.

          The candy cache is up exponentially from The Days of Old, too. Students of mine no longer count “number of pieces” they received; that might take as long as the trick-or-treating gig itself. Now they WEIGH their bounty! The highest I’ve heard so far is nine pounds, six ounces! Can we say, “Tooth decay?”

          Leah, who always struggled with math, made a graph of her acquisitions one year. Not because she wanted to improve her math skills or receive extra credit at school, but rather so she’d know if – and exactly what – I pilfered. Brat.

          Still, regardless of whether you go subtle or all-out for the occasion, Halloween can be great fun. I did regret the day, years ago, though, when I admitted to a six-year-old piano student of mine that I liked Halloween.

          She rolled her eyes and retorted, “Well, of course YOU like Halloween. That’s ‘cause you’re always wearing COSTUMES!”

                                    *sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh*