happy halloween

A really old couple lived down the street from my house when I was growing up. They were really really old. My dad used to make us trick-or-treat at their house even though we didn't want to. I guess the old man got a kick out of it. We didn't get a kick out of the fact that he smoked cigars and would give us Little Debbie snacks that smelled so strongly of cigar smoke that the rest of our candy smelled like it. It got to the point where we would go to their house first, run home and throw the shit away, and then go to the rest of the houses. I don't remember if that was before or after the old woman started going all senile. We used to come home from school and she'd be walking down the street in her bathrobe. If we said "hello" she'd yell, "MIND YOUR OWN!!" at us. We'd go home and tell our mom that she was out again. My mom would get in the car and drive up to her. The old woman would say, "Mind your own. I'm walking my dog around the block." Of course "the block" in our neighborhood was about a 5 mile trip and their dog had died a million years earlier. My mom would offer to take she and her dog for a ride in the car and amazingly enough the old woman would get in. My mom would drive around the block and take 'them' home.

In other halloween memories, when we were done trick-or-treating my dad would spread our candy out on the kitchen table and check it for razor blades and stuff. Apparently there was no snopes.com to dispel urban myths back then. The best part about the ritual was that he would pretend like he loved all of the non-candy items we got and would take them off our hands. I don't think he pretended to love the cigar Little Debbie snackcakes though. But every year some asshole always handed out pennies or homemade popcorn balls or apples or some other stupid shit that we wanted no part of. Perhaps we were the ungrateful assholes? Oh well. We were kids. To us, halloween was about free candy, not pennies and health food.

The last time I went trick-or-treating I was with my sister's family. It was a really really cold night and my brother-in-law hooked me up with a 1/2 pint of HotDamn to keep me warm. Trick-or-treating hadn't been such fun since high school when I probably had a fifth of vodka to keep me warm. I wonder if someday my niece and/or nephew will tell stories about their Aunt JenJen getting drunk while trick-or-treating with them.

The kids tonight were lots of fun. Trick-or-treating in the city is different than trick-or-treating in the suburb. In the city there are lots of kids that can't afford costumes. It's not that they can't afford to spend money on storebought costumes and are too lazy to make one up from stuff they have at home. They don't have stuff to make costumes at home either. The kids tonight were super polite and just seemed to be having a blast. Jesse and I took turns handing out candy and I think we had a blast, too.