The Halloween That Was

Like most things in my life for the past few weeks, this post is a bit late. It should have been posted on All Hallows Eve, but instead you get to enjoy it now. At least Pink Floyd's Time is playing in the background to make sense of the utter disregard for chronology this blog shows. So play this as you read. {*grin*}

I don't know about your neck of the woods, but Halloween here was a bit lower key than normal just because of the day.  Since the merchants and the city and the nursing homes all ran their celebrations on Friday, there seems to have been less incentive for the little tricksters to be out and about on Sunday for the official event. Normally we see between 40-70 trick or treaters at the front door before we shut the lights off at ~8pm. This year we only had 31, somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3 of the normal total.

There was also a discernible difference in the composition of the visitors. Most years we see a fair number of teens and tweens in groups of 4 or more interspersed with a lot of sibling groups of 1 or 2 under the age of 10. This year, it was almost all youngsters in various sized groups with the parents standing out at the street watching. When Molly the wonder dog and I would answer the door, it left a lot of them in shock. It took them a few moments to remember that they were supposed to say trick or treat. Some just wanted to pet the doggy, some just wanted to hide from the doggy, and some were heard to say "dad, he gave us snickers!" as they departed for the next house. At least I didn't have to put this sign up to excuse Molly's behavior this year:

The smaller crowd also means that I have several bags of candy left over. It should make L happy when she journeys home this weekend. I'm just happy that it is all in un-opened bags so that it doesn't tempt me!

Time to go vote. Make sure you do too. Vote that is, not go.