Trick or Treat!!

Another Halloween. If I buy the candy at the last minute, I can avoid eating it all and I have done that before. If there's a bag of Snickers lying on the kitchen table, it usually calls out my name, “Ron..just one...only one...there will be enough for the kids!”

A day later the empty bag is in the basket.

One Halloween, I ran out of candy as a line of little kids were lining up at my door. The worst thing to do would be to say, “Sorry, I'm out” and close the door and crush the innocent world of a little girl dressed up as the Ice Princess. So I got my junk bowl which was full of spare change and dumped some into her bag.

She shouts out:

“THANK YOU! HEY...THIS MAN'S GIVING OUT MONEY!”

The kids at the house next door came running when they overheard that.

So, I parceled out dimes, quarters, nickles and pennies just to be sure no one was disappointed. Once that gaggle of kids had moved on, I turned off the outside light, killed the living room light and hid.

Halloween Memories...Only about three which stick with me.

My first one I remember I was dressed as Casper the Ghost. The plastic face mask was great for holding in your breath's humidity and making your face sweat. The gown was good for tripping up on. Once I got home, the police, my Dad, went through the candy to make sure there weren't any razor blades, arsenic and such. While doing so, he deftly stole all the Necco Wafers he could find. I was OK with that as Necco wafers were disgusting. He could have all he wanted. That and the black licorice too.

My last time going out for Halloween was when I was 14. That was a tough one to pull off because I was about 5 foot 6 and weighing over 100bls. Most of the people's doors we rang questioned our group about our age.

“You're kinda big for a 12 year old huh?” they'd comment.

“Yeah, I get told that all the time in school.” I'd lie.

The funny thing is, these same 14 year olds will come to MY door on Halloween looking for free sweets. I look at them as robbers as this candy is for the little ones. Ah well, can I complain since I did it myself back then? No, but I now know what all those adults thought of us then when we did it.

The last memory was a pure teen one. Halloween meant partying and that's what we did. One of us had stolen from his parent's liquor cabinet a bottle of Jameson's Irish Whiskey. I had my own Jaquin's Peach Flavored Brandy which was good for a decent buzz. The rest of us had a sort of Pot Luck combination of beer, pot, wine...you get it.

While we were boozing it up on the corner of Hamlet and Legris by Perry's house (a cool guy about 10 years older than us. He never called the cops on us!), Mark M. finally demanded that the Irish whiskey be opened up. He then took a very brave teenagerish, looooong slug from the bottle. It looked like he was just drinking water. He then turned around and vomited it all up on the back of Jimmy's leather coat...which he was still wearing. The puke just ran down his coat onto the street. We were a bit amazed at the volume of it all

“Wow, that'a a lot! More than that dog pukes up that lives in McNulty's house!”

That was entertaining as none of us saw that coming.

In about 15 mins, Mark could barely walk. We watched him stumble the whole 20 yards to his front door and go in.

The next day, I was in my RIC classes, regretting I got home drunk around 3 AM.

So, that's it. All the memories that stuck with me. This doesn't include the adult nightclub/bar Halloweens were people try to dress up to win that prize and then puke in the parking lot after.