Rant #2,013: Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)

Happy Halloween!

I guess I am saying that mostly for the kids, because let's be honest about it, today's Halloween doesn't even come close to the Halloween that I had as a child.

But it is Halloween, so happy holiday to you all.

I guess I could stop my Rant right there, but I am not going to do that.

In today's world, we hardly get any trick or treaters at my house.

We have the candy, we dress up the house, but we might get one or two stragglers, but generally, we don't get anybody during Halloween.

The times are so different today. Today, kids go with their parents, and they generally only go to houses that they know, so that pretty much leaves us out, even though my family has occupied this house since 1971.

We have a "kid" in the house, but he is 22, so no, the parents with young kids don't know us.

The schools have organized events revolving around the holiday, even the local mall does.

But the problem with these well-intentioned events are that they are planned.

The fun that we had on Halloween way back when was that everything was unplanned--you never knew what you were getting--and that was half the fun.

I lived in a development with 20 buildings, each of which had three sections and 13 floors apiece, with about seven apartments on each floor. There were thousands of apartments to visit during Halloween,

And boy, did we get candy!

If we were industrious enough, we could get bags and bags and more bags of candy, and even some pennies mixed into the sweet stuff.

I remember that after trick or treating, my sister and I would dump the contents of our bags on the kitchen table, and we would go over what was inside with my mother.

I am not a candy eater, so I used to give all my candy to my mother and sister, who both ate candy like some of us eat steak.

I kept the change, of course, and I am sure that money helped me pay for my comic books and my bubblegum cards.

Sure, once in a while we would get something bad in our stash--my sister got an apple filled with pins one year, and we always got open candy which was immediately dumped--but generally, everything was fine.

One year, our door got bathed in a succession of one rotten egg after another, but by that point, we knew that the development had changed, and I guess this was a sign that it was time to leave.

And I guess that also was a signal that Halloween for me, for all intents and purposes, was over, and honestly, it has been over since that last year in our old neighborhood and since we moved out to Long Island.

Even in the 1970s--when I didn't trick or treat anymore--I could see that the holiday wasn't the same. It just was not the same in a suburban setting as it was in an urban setting, and I was done with it anyway.

Becoming a father in the late 1980s, and then a divorced father, presented other Halloween problems. In the early years of my daughter's life, sometimes my ex-wife and I would split the day, and by the time I had my daughter, a lot of people simply would not open their doors anymore.

Other years, I got her one year, my ex-wife got her another year, but honestly, it never worked out the right way, things were uneven, and try as I might, Halloween became a chore for me, and I don't think my daughter got much out of it, with me at least.

When my son came around, I went with him from house to house--he had no friends to go with--and, well, I saw first hand how Halloween changed.

We would go in the neighborhood, some people opened their doors, many didn't, and he got what he got. At least there were no time limits on me as there was with my daughter, but it simply was not the same as when I was a kid, no way, no how.

Heck, today there are even controversies about costumes, everything from an Anne Frank costume to one where the tattooed skin of a character is show.

People have their kids make their own political statements during Halloween. They wear costumes that reflect their parents' beliefs, on various levels, including empowerment.

People today get upset at Halloween. Why?

It is supposed to be a happy holiday, but adults have completely stolen the holiday from their children, and that is simply plain wrong.

So have a good Halloween everyone.

At this point, let's just say that the kids will have fun, but they simply do not know what they are missing.

And maybe that is a good thing, because if the kids knew what they were missing, I don't think they would be too happy with the holiday that they were left with.