Scrouge

If you were to stop by our house on Halloween, you would have been sorely disappointed. We turned the lights off, closed the curtains and tried to make our home look as uninviting as possible. Amazingly, people took the hint. No one knocked. Its not that we hate Halloween, or hate kids, or whatever. Its just annoying. You go out and spend a bunch of money on candy, and you get a bunch of over-aged brats knocking on your door for a piece of candy. Don't get me wrong. I have fond memories of trick-or-treating. For you city-folk, we had to drive around from house to house if we wanted to go more than two or three places. It was fun. We got loads of candy, came home and sorted it all out. Then the real fun began. We would barter, trade, steal, beg, etc. All to get what we most wanted. "I'll trade you two Bottlecaps for one Reece's" "No, give me two Mambas and two Nerds for a Reece's" "No, that's a rip-off!" "OK, one Mamba and a box of Nerds" "OK, its a deal" You get the point. And, we had the coolest Mom around. She let us stuff our faces with as much candy as we pleased. She didn't care if we ate the whole loot in one night. It was a kid's dream come true. But back to our current lack of enthusiasm about trick-or-treaters. Here are the reasons it annoys me:

1. Dress up, please!
2. Parents, you aren't supposed to grab candy for yourself. That's just tacky.
3. Don't give me evil looks if I don't have the candy you like, or I didn't give you half the bag. Afterall, it could be worse. I could be one of those people who hands out pretzels or oranges.
4. High-schoolers, give it up! Go buy yourself a giant bag of candy at Walmart and stay home!

Now the secret is out! We are heartless Scrouges. One of these years, we'll take James out and we'll feel obligated to provide candy to the other neighborhood kids. Until then, we'll turn our lights out and go to bed early!

PS. We did take James over to Mom and Dad's and, for those of you concerned about us depriving our son of sugar....drumroll, please....he got an entire Reece's peanut butter cup all to himself! (And he liked it very much) I'll post pictures one of these days.