Of course Halloween is fun. Any opportunity to get dressed up in a weird outfit and go out with your friends is going to be fun. But when the party ends and the wait at Toppers begins, I always find myself a bit underwhelmed.
Remember when the only crowd you had to navigate on Halloween was the school parade around the gym? Remember when Halloween was spent in the comforting company of a chaperoning parent? Remember being given free candy by strangers?
Don’t you miss that?!
Throughout elementary and middle school, Halloween was all about suiting up and stashing serious amounts of that sugary good-good. I’m talking Smarties, Kit Kats, Gushers, Airheads, Reese’s, Jolly Ranchers and Ring Pops. All of these goods are things I could now purchase for myself, but the liberty to demand free food and then actually receive it was special and fleeting.
The post-consumption sugar high and the late night sugar coma were great for me and a nightmare for my parents. The look in my eyes upon getting my grubby little hands on some candy was probably the scariest sight to be seen on Halloween night.
I was not the kind of kid who walked around with a little pumpkin-shaped plastic tote to gently dust with an appropriate smattering of candy.
I was a shopping bag kid. As in, I would carry two large plastic shopping bags to systematically plunder the neighborhood for all of its high-fructose goodness.
One of the sadder days of my life was realizing that I was just too old to engage in trick-or-treating. No neighbor wants to be handing out candy to someone who is old enough to buy his or her own.
