Halloween night as it should be
Cute kids, spoopiness, that chill in the air, and a little fiction
If you know me, you probably know that I’m not big on kids. I chose not to have them, myself, and often find myself uncomfortable around them. I like babies; babies like me, and I find their needs and ways of being easy to relate to. (I also like how they don’t talk, so I can just sort of vibe with them.) And often I can find kids charming and adorable. I just don’t really want to take care of them for an extended period.
As usual, there is definitely an entire other post to be written about me and kids, so I’ll leave it at that for now. Because the point is that Halloween, with all its little costumed rascals, is absolutely perfect for me in this respect. Let’s take a look at what we’ve got:
cute, funny, spooky kids
who aren’t mine
but are usually in a great mood because it’s the most awesome holiday
and are wearing costumes, sometimes ingenious and delightful
coming to my door for candy
being polite or rude or funny or sweet
and going away again
This, as I texted to my partner while it was going on, is exactly the amount of kids I want in my life!
I had this idea last week sometime that I wanted to dress up scary, sit on the porch behind the giant hydrangea bushes, wait for kids to come to the door and then come to life like some giant spooky decoration that turned out to be real. Turns out it was way too cold for that, plus the kids start running around at like 5:30. But I did dress up scary and come to the door all forbidding, and kids seemed to like that.
Most kids were just flat-out Canada-polite, like came to the door all wide-eyed and shy, said “trick or treat!” or said nothing like tiny deer in headlights, took one candy each and said thank you. A couple young teenage boys came up all cool saying “happy merry” and holly jolly,” and the like, and I just pulled out the deep spooky voice and said “wrong holiday.” A grown man and woman I’d seen in the park one of the first days we were in the neighborhood, the man with probably Tourette’s or some related disorder, the woman probably his caretaker. They came to the door and she took candy for both of them; when they turned away I saw his hockey jersey said “Satan.”
Later, in keeping with a theme I suppose, three teenage girls showed up wearing matching red and white stripey onesies and multicolored lights and said “Merry Christmas” instead of trick or treat. Unlike the teenage boys from earlier, they seemed sweet and sincere, and I enjoyed the effort.
Early in the night, when my hair was still a little damp and before I’d gotten made up, a group of three little girls came up, maybe 6 or 7, of which one was clearly The Talker. She busily narrated everything, made sure all the girls got candy, rapid-fired something about putting her hand in a witch’s cauldron that I didn’t quite catch, then looked me in the face and said “You took a shower,” in that peculiar way that kids of a certain age have where they cannot help but frankly observe whatever obvious thing they have noticed aloud. (Some people never outgrow this.)
“Yes, I did,” I said, with equal matter-of-factness. She thanked me again, round-eyed and probably completely hopped up on sugar, then turned down the steps, still chattering to her fellows.
I did try the sitting-to-one-side thing for one set of kids, an adorable pair dressed as a young wizard and a skeleton. They too were wide-eyed and quiet, and didn’t seem to know what to do with me, but they shyly took candy and left. Then I heard their parents talking to them in French and was delighted.
I spent many years in apartments, and the past eleven or so in a house set so far back from the road that kids don’t bother coming up it. (My housemate claimed that we had “never once had a single trick-or-treater,” to which I retorted what amounts to approximately the same thing: I believed we had ever once had a single trick-or-treater. But it’s rather the exception that proves the rule.
Last year we were busily packing to move from Ottawa to Montreal on Halloween night; the year before that, I recall a walk through my Boston-area neighborhood that was thick with trick or treaters, including many adults also in costume, blocking traffic and clearly having a blast. It was a little overwhelming but also wonderful. It was a sweet thing, this year, to step out and hear the spooky music coming from a nearby porch, see the kids walking to various houses or coming out of them, their parents straightening their little hats and making sure they’re warm enough, the kids chatter and laughter and shrieks punctuating the cool air.
I have a special relationship with this holiday, which I attempted to express in a semi autobiographical short story a few years back. If you’re interested in reading that, here it is.
Either way, I hope yours was safe and scary and bright and sweet.