Scared?

Ah… Halloween… that time of year when I lock the gate to my front porch, turn off all the lights, and sneak off to dinner at a nice restaurant where I can wile away the hours and not deal with the candy-seeking, costumed children. Is that mean? Nah… what would be mean would be to actually answer the door and drop one of those “why we don’t celebrate Halloween” pamphlets into the kids’ bags. I always hated it when people did that… just leave your lights off if you don’t want to give away candy. Don’t present the ILLUSION of a house with candy only to hand out a paper pamphlet that will immediately find its way into the garbage once the night is over…

Of course, I think the whole idea of Halloween is rather bizarre and confusing. I mean, 364 days a year, we tell kids NOT to take candy from strangers. A wise admonishment, I think. And then Halloween comes along, and all of a sudden we’re ENCOURAGING kids to take candy from strangers. Talk about mixed messages… :)

I can’t remember ever really being all that enthralled with Halloween, even when I was a kid. I seem to remember thinking it was quite strange to knock on people’s doors and expect them to simply give me candy when they didn’t even KNOW me. It was a bit embarrassing, really – why should I assume that anyone would want to give me Hershey bars and Tootsie Pops and candy corn when I haven’t so much as properly introduced myself? Wouldn’t that be rather presumptuous of me?

Anyway, it’s better to go out for dinner ONE night and skip all the candy-giving, instead of having bags of leftover candy lying around the house – which I would, no doubt, eat with absolutely no discretion whatsoever, leaving me with feelings of remorse and possibly an upset stomach. And I’ve been doing so well with eating right and exercising lately – best to not ruin a good thing. At least not until I go to Hawaii… and then I plan to ruin it all… :)