All Hallows’ Evolution
Halloween has many phases, and the trick-or-treat cycle seems to represent life in general.
EXUBERANCE
When you’re a kid, you live for it. You want the coolest costume and love dressing up. Candy is an amazing perk and the promise of 4 weeks of digging around in your pillow sack for one more Reese’s creates a building giddiness that starts in August. You have a consummate zest for life and the sugar kick just helps add a little zing.
AWKWARDNESS
When you’re a teenager, things get kinda weird. Do I dress up again? Am I too tall? Is 17 years too old? Is it still cool to go as Aquaman or will the football players find out and beat my ass tomorrow? The candy isn’t so much of a big deal but you still crave the thrill of wading through the moonlight in anonymity.
INEBRIATION
College. The candy is replaced with stale kegs, Hairy buff and Cherry bombs. It’s all about being silly stupid and getting drunk. Costumes are big again, but in a different sense. The guys want to make you laugh. The girls want to make you look. The entire holiday (and every holiday for that matter, including the newly popular “National Talk Like a Pirate Day) is just an excuse to get all twisted without your normal clothes on.
INDUCTION
When you graduate and finally get your own place, but you don’t have kids, you can’t help but feel a bit uncomfortable. Is it creepier if the new guy in the neighborhood dresses up and hands out candy or just sits there in jeans and distributes Laffy Taffy? I don’t know? I’m still trying to figure it out. What is certain is that you have once chance to establish yourself as a worthy house to these kids. Decide to save a few bucks and hand out Necco Wafers instead of Starbursts and you’ll be lumped in with the Dentists of the neighborhood.
INFANCY
When you get your first kid, everything changes. You immediately lose any creepiness and you’re back in the game. You get to dress up again without feeling stupid and you get to go trick-or-treating again without getting your ass kicked. Plus, you can snake a few pieces of candy from your kids during the early stages, claiming their “teeth aren’t ready yet.” My Dad tried that for 8 years.
EXIT
After the kids have come and gone, the fun’s over. Your teeth fall out, you can’t hear the doorbell anymore and for some reason you get genuinely upset when kids simply walk through your yard. The trick-or-treating ain’t so sweet anymore and, yup, you have officially gone dark. You’re that house that turns off the lights and locks the doors from 5-9 p.m. or whenever Wheel of Fortune ends. You mumble to yourself about how you had to walk three miles in a homemade costume for a mere slice of apple, but these kids today don’t know wha…
