Halloween

I don't feel like I really 'did' Halloween this year. I put on my purple yolk to hand out candy, and Mo put on her pirate costume from last year over her regular clothes and asked to go trick-or-treating.

We'd been over this. I got a lot of dirty looks the last few years, Mo being as big as she is. But I really like taking her, and you see a few high schoolers out doing it. But it really is, and should be, a holiday for little kids, and a freshman in high school who can share clothes with her mother doesn't qualify, I'm afraid.

It was basically a matter of drawing the line somewhere, arbitrary I suppose. Maybe I should have taken her one last time, the last time Halloween will be in this neighborhood for us.

I loaded up on candy to give out, knowing the weather would be perfect (I don't buy early anymore, a few years ago it sleeted on Halloween and I was stuck with several pounds of Mary Janes, a candy I don't even like). Big bag of Reeses cups, big bag of Kit-Kats, and a truly colossal bag of the low-caste stuff, suckers, jawbreakers, bubblegum and whatnot. I think the total was over 300 pieces, and I gave at most two out to each kid until the very end, when it got to be ten minutes or more between and the kids got to be at least as ridiculously old as Mo is to be out pestering strangers for candy.

By then there were just a few handfuls of the garbage candy left, and I let those old-enough-to-drive kids have it all so I could turn out the light and focus on the Chiefs game.

Em had play practice and wasn't allowed to dress up for that, Mo and me barely dressed up, no jack o'lanterns were carved, but it didn't turn out to be such a rubbish Halloween. Taking Mo around on the begathon the past few years, I've mostly missed out on handing out, especially to the kids who are young enough to be super-cute. I had a unicorn, a mermaid, and a cowgirl who couldn't have been older than three. I also had three or four Ironmen (and almost as many Spidermen), a Bubba Starling, a hobo, a pair of Bavarian Barbarians and a pair of dice. It was great fun, especially quizzing the less obvious kids.

What's your costume? I asked one kid. A college student?

"I'm a character from The Hunger Games."

Okay, Mo's big sister is reading that, so you're too old. That's why you got a rock.