Now back when I was a kid...

That's right... I said it... back when I was a kid.

So the nightmare on our street (that is Halloween) is finally over. I don't know if I've blogged about this in the past... if I have and you remember... tough.

We lay to rest another Halloween freak show on our street. To understand where I'm coming from is to experience it. I can assure any and all of you reading this post that you have NEVER experienced Halloween like this. I am of the mind set that it's gotten worse as the years have gone on... worse in the sense that it's become more and more crowded.

This is where I show my crankiness and sound like an old codger... maybe I am one... maybe I'm not. MAYBE I'm on my way to codgerness.

I can remember back when I used to trick or treat... back when there were not hours set for trick or treating... I can remember one instance where I came home and emptied my "bag" and went back out! Way back when you were worried about getting a razor blade in an apple. HA! You can't afford to hand out apples these days and honestly, who has THAT kind of time to insert razor blades into apples. I will take it one step further... for us here to hand out apples... as in one apple per trick or treater... I would literally have to have an apple orchard in my backyard. More on that in a bit.

Now I enjoy candy (not as much as I used to) but my tastes have become somewhat more sophisticated... or snobbish perhaps. In any event, never in my life was it, nor will it, become one of the food groups in my diet... that's reserved for Coke. I find myself wondering where the caring has gone. What I mean by that is when did it become common to just throw on everyday clothes, grab your pillow case and expect candy... expect candy without saying the magic words... Trick or Treat. I really hate that. At the same time, you don't want to make a big deal about it for fear that there'd be some type of retaliation to your property. Again... showing my age a bit.

Julie and I have instilled in our kids that you HAVE to say trick or treat and thank-you... if you don't you will hear it from us... okay... mostly me. They also have to dress in something that they wouldn't be seen dead in on any other day. In other words a legit costume.

If you couple the laziness factor (those who don't "dress") with the sheer mass of candy seekers... it really dampens the old Halloween spirit. Get it? Spirit... Halloween?

It's become so much of a hassle to fight our way though the crowed sidewalks over recent years that we've taken to leaving our street so the kids don't get trampled... this year being no exception. We usually hit our immediate neighbors before Julie packs 'em in the truck and drives them out of harms way to an area several blocks away from the chaotic amusement park atmosphere. Emmah did not dress this year, so I stayed home and was to hand out candy.

Earlier in the day Julie was running a few errands and she decided to stop and get a bag of candy to hand out. Consider our past week when you wonder why we're buying candy ON Halloween. Now our usual modus operandi is we go out with the kids and then when done, we come home to hand out candy. So after hitting out immediate neighbors Julie pulled away and I went in, it was 4:15. Our trick or treating hours were 3:30 to 6:00. I decided that based on the amount of candy we had I would go out around 5... I honestly (and seriously) thought about going out later than that. Julie purchased a 5 1/3 pound bag of candy... a "cheap bag" at nine something dollars. We also added to that some candy that the kids decided that they didn't like/want that they collected from a parade that came down our street earlier in fall that they (the parade people) were tossing. In all it was a bowl with more than six pounds of candy.

I can't rightly say how many pieces were in that bowl, but it was a really big bowl... 13 quarts to be exact... and it was filled to the top. Not "overflowing" but full. 13 quarts of candy should go a fairly long way... right?

Wrong...

Now mind you I contemplated going out closer to 5:30 than 5:00. Against my better judgment I did go out at 5.

By 5:15 I was out!

For those "keeping score at home" that's 6+ pounds of candy gone in fifteen minutes... ONE PIECE AT A TIME! If I were to extrapolate that out (and who doesn't love to extrapolate?) to the two and half hours of trick or treating... we'd have to have something like 72 pounds of candy!

And my arm would be in a sling...

Why so many candy seekers... and there are lazy seekers. A couple reasons I suppose. One... our neighborhood. Two... the haunted yard that our neighbor sets up every year. We (those of us veterans that live on this street) don't hand out candy via the door... it's just easier to set up shop outside of the house in a chair and a conveyor belt.

Oh well... until next years "event"

Happy Halloween