Why should Halloween be just for the kids? Okay, I really do understand the reasons why trick or treating is for children, but it took me a long time to get it out of my system. A VERY LONG TIME. It may have involved trick-or-treating as an adult on more than one occasion. Okay, it did involve that. I admit it. I LOVE TRICK-OR-TREATING!!!!!!!!!
Trick or treating as a child was perhaps the highlight of my entire year. I loved candy, I didn't have an allowance most of my life, and this was my one chance all year long to hit the mother load. Easter and Christmas were great too, but Halloween offered so much more! I grew up in a nice flat Texas neighborhood and we would trick or treat for about 3 hours straight, often running from house to house. I probably pulled in 5-10 pounds of candy, which I never managed to make last past Christmas, unlike my friend Ronni who would eat one piece a day. Some people are just born with incredible discipline. Some of us are born dreaming of Reece's Peanut Butter Cups. Oh, sweet memories of childhood!
Well, I had really awesome parents who let us trick or treat every year and didn't make us stop at any particular age. But, my older siblings naturally stopped around 16, so I thought I would too. I was planning on my last year of trick or treating to be the best yet. Then my dad got a job in Moscow Russia and 6 weeks later, in September of 2001, we were living there. They don't have Halloween in Russia. Ahhh!!!!! Horror of Horrors! I was traumatized. My parents couldn't even go out and buy me candy to make up for it because they didn't have much imported American candy and Russian candy was just not the same. I probably should have felt worse for my little brothers, but hey, I was a selfish teenager, and I just felt bad for me. I slowly simmered about my lost candy for 3 years. Then I moved back to America, 17 years old, as a Freshman at Brigham Young University. Halloween quickly approached and I made my plans. I would go trick or treating!
I selected my partner in crime, a boy in my ward who was also very youthful looking. We dressed up and we headed on foot up to the married housing apts. at the North of campus. And it worked! They gave us candy!
You might think I felt redeemed, but no, it was more like the having the pump primed. The next year I was dating my husband and we trick or treated around his cul-de-sac. So, it was 6 houses, but I did go. The next year, we refrained. The next year we had a 3 week old baby- plenty old for trick or treating. And by the next year, when he was 12 months old, he was totally old enough to beg for candy, and still too young to eat it! Ha ha !
Since then, we've been legitimately taking our children trick or treating and not even stealing their candy.
And I was almost recovered from my need to go, but I needed one more jaunt into the magical world of Halloween. I was 27. Yes. I was 27. I looked very young. I dressed up as a butterfly and took my 14 year old sister out with me in my in-laws neighborhood. These people knew me, but I wore an eye mask. I hauled. And I didn't have even one person look at me strangely . I had 3 children at this point. I know, I'm pitiful, but I wanted the candy. I shared it with Judd. We were poor. But, the good news, I'm sure you'll be glad to read, is that I was finally cured. Time, and better income, finally satiated my desire to beg door to door for goodies. I am a recovered trick or treater. It doesn't hurt that my mouth issues prohibit me from eating most candy these days. Anyway, that is my confession, my deep dark secret? What's yours?
Honest & true, I only take candy from the Halloween bucket after I ask the kids of they want that one. We let them eat the candy from their own stash the first night, then its communal! Yum.
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