Monday, November 2, 2009

Halloween II

While trick-or-treating this Halloween, someone gave my kids each a cup of hot chocolate at one of the houses. Is this as strange and anachronistic to you as it is to me? I was a small child when the idea of giving out homemade treats to children became taboo. I'm willing to bet that there is no actual incidents of people poisoning treats for kids, but all the same, that's the fear that disallowed homemade treats for good. That and the possible razor blade (or something like that) in the caramel apple. But all the old ladies that were holding out on that have died. It hasn't been okay to give out homemade treats since 1987, maybe even earlier. But here we are in 2009, and there's someone still doing it? Weird, just weird.

It turns out that this kind of thing is in fact dangerous, too. Because my youngest daughter received her cup from this house, turned around and said, "Daddy, look, I got hot chocolate," and promptly fell down the cement stairs that led up to this house's front porch. She spilled the hot chocolate all over her costume, and banged her leg up pretty good too. She cried for several minutes, running her clown make-up all over her face, and the good folks that lived at that house had to fetch a band-aid to placate her. Trick-or-treating didn't last much longer after that either--her spirit had been broken by the fall.

Strangely, at the end of the night, as we were driving back to our house, my wife asked the kids what their favorite part of the night was, and sprinkled into the other two kids responses was my daughter saying her favorite part was falling down the stairs. Huh?

1 comment:

Rish Outfield said...

You absolutely have to use this in a story, sir.

'Cause if you don't, you KNOW I will.