Halloween debrief.
Trick or treaters: 37
Dad jokes told: 15
People who stroked Trick: 3, before losing a few fingers
People who stroked Treat: most of them
Chocolate left for me: half a pack of chewy sweets and some white chocolate tombstones
That’s how it went. I find Halloween a little lacking these days.
“Should I hide behind the car and jump out when they walk up the drive?”
“NO!”
“What about tying a red balloon to that grate?”
“It might be a driving hazard.”
Honestly, where’s the menacing spirit gone? What happened to having some tricks? When I asked a few kids what tricks they had up their sleeves they didn’t know. Such polite little monsters, taking just one sweet and wishing me happy Halloween and telling me a joke. Don’t get me wrong, it was all lovely and cute but there’s a certain sort of nasty that is lost to us all. Is that good? Maybe it is. I understand that burning dog poo on someones doormat, greasing up their door knob, or wazzing on their car is totally unacceptable, but some practical japers wouldn’t go amiss.
I kept getting up and down like a yoyo as the door ringers came. If you’d have asked me to do that many squats at the gym I would have cried. I decided to put my camera on the TV so I could watch them coming, run to the door and fling it open shouting BOOOOOO really loud just as they went to knock. That didn’t last long. I think I went into some mother’s black book of grudges when her little Wednesday wet her pants.
Then I had hoards of teenagers. They weren’t any better. I expected some attitude from them. Nothing.
A load of teen girls then came dressed up as cheeky, flirty versions of dark characters, like they do.
“WOW! You look amazing!” I said, wanting to inspire confidence and sass into the ever plagued insecure mind of a female aged 13- 40.
“Thanks,” they replied casually as they took some sugary refreshers. It was then that I noticed one of them had come come dressed as a pregnant teenager.
“Haha!” I pointed at her stomach. “Nice one!” Right at the same time as my diplomacy kicked in and reminded my brain to tell its mouth to shut up. Oh my God!
Is this a joke or is she really pregnant?
Maybe it’s how I was brought up, I don’t know, but I begged for a Krampus to run down the street to tip the balance. I remember a time when trick or treaters came to the door and my step father, in his wisdom, decided it would be a great idea to don a WW1 tin hat and a rifle and greet the kids with a gun in their faces followed by “TRICK!” When they ran off screaming, my mother and I had a right go at him and waited for the police to arrive and throw him in jail, or an upset dad to roll up and smack him in the mouth. Neither happened. In fact, more kids came asking for the crazy man. This is the same moral guidance that told me to shut my eyes and hold my hands out as he’d bought me a book. When I opened them, there was a dead rabbit in my arms which made me scream my head off.
“Watership Down in Braille”
Really.
It explains a lot doesn’t it.
Anyway, it’s bonfire night tomorrow so at least I can burn a scarecrow. Well, at least that’s what they’ll all think it is…
Though No:6 has already packed her bags and left. She only stuck around for 5 minutes before finding a new gaff!
Stateside at least, kids have the wry humor and prankishness programmed out of them by elders who fear those behaviors might be "offfennnsive". Saccharine is a fake sweetener, so it's an approved role model these days. This is truly a sad development for us Boomers and Gen Jonesers, who grew up healthy and strong and confident on a diet of Monty Python and Gilbert Gottfried and Private Eye magazine.