Sunday, October 30, 2005

Punk Walrus's Halloween Story

I make goody bags. We're the best on the block.

For safety, we buy a pack of glow-bracelets, the ones that you snap and shake, and they glow for 8 hours. You seem at concerts and stuff. I can buy 4doz for $40. Every kid gets one (wee ones, I ask parental permission, because even though the goo is non-toxic, better safe than sorry).

Each plastic boo-ghost bag has:
- 1 full-sized Snickers
- Full sized Reece's PB Cup
- A small GID rubber duck
- A small silver bead maze
- A set of vampire fangs with whistle
- GID spider ring (see below)

Why? My parents were cheap. My father was one of those Grinches who had this speech about how hard he worked and didn't owe brats a damn cent, and for years, I was the one who had to scrub the damn egg from the cars and house, or pull TP out of the trees every Nov 1st.

After few years of this, and my mother relented and gave kids a stick of chewing gum. Cheap, yes, but we didn't get TP'd or egged that year. Later, my mother somehow got like a gross of cheap plastic spider rings because she didn't like the idea of kids rotting their teeth with candy. We didn't get egged or TP'd, but I was "the house that gave out crummy spider rings every year."

All this time, I was not allowed to go trick-or-treating.

In high school, a bunch of friends who spent their childhood overseas (military brats, state department brats) commiserated they didn't get to go ToT'ing either. So one year, even though we were 14-ish, we dressed up, and went out. No one said a thing. So we did it for the next 3 years, and noticed some people gave out FULL size bars (one guy gave out 1lb bags of M&Ms), and how awesome they were.

So that's why. I love Halloween, and it's my money, and sure there are some ungrateful brats, but I don't do it for them. Parents are pretty cool, too, and we deck out our yard with gravestones and haunted accessories.

Oh, and the ring is a tribute to my late mother. The one who had the clue.
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