Trunk or Treat
Well, the Soccer Moms have done it again, they’re working overtime to suck every bit of joy out of childhood (see: Imagination Stations) so now they’ve bestowed upon us “Trunk or Treat.”
So let’s review: We started with “Everyone gets a trophy;” that morphed into the “Triple Gold Medal” (third place gets gold, second gets double gold, first gets triple gold”); we have “Girls on the Run,” kindergarten graduations, gift packets for everyone who shows up at a birthday party PLUS all the kids get to blow out the candles (nothing tastier than a cake nine kids have individually spat upon) and now we have “Trunk or Treat.”
For those of you unfamiliar, apparently walking house to house was too strenuous for our little lumps of veal so now the moms pick out a parking lot, everyone backs their car in, and the kids Trick or Treat at the cars which are two feet apart.
Wheeee!
If the kids feel like Trick or Treating in an actual neighborhood the moms, of course, have to dress up and accompany them even if the kids are fifteen years old. I had probably 800 Trick or Treaters and I bet 100 of them were full grown dressed up adults and 90 of those were women. Give it up, Karen, the wall has been hit,
accept your fate, your Naughty Nurse doing Jello shots days are OVER!
Of course being Grand Haven the entire downtown has to have a seperate Trick or Treat session at all the stores. So kids are taken downtown, then to Trunk or Treat, then they hit the neighborhoods. A lady on my Facebook page said her grandkids came home with twenty four POUNDS of candy. That’s right, twenty four pounds, so unless she had fifty grandkids that’s a smidge excessive.
And that isn’t twenty four pounds of Smarties or three-to-a-pack-candy corn. If you’re handing out treats now and you’re not dropping a MINIMUM of two bite sized Snickers bars you might be looking at a house egging. Oh, wait, kids can’t throw anymore, you’re safe.
It’s gotten to the point that if you were to hand out, say, Dum Dum suckers the kids will look at you like they were expecting a Honey Baked Ham and the parents will think you have a reverse mortgage.
So how ‘bout we take a step back, Michael Jackson, and let kids enjoy a rite of passage that’s just theirs. Halloween isn’t an homage to gluttony, it’s an adventure.
It’s about running around with your friends free of surveillance mom. If you get an apple, whip it at a stop sign, if you see some friends from school hook up with them and run around together. If you live in a sparsely populated neighborhood, that’s okay, ten pieces of candy is plenty and the neighbors will be glad to see you and tell you how big you’re getting. Getting old happens in the flick of an ear. Enjoy at least one night of freedom before the world clamps you down, and if you’re twelve years old and your mom says she’s coming along tell her she can just ... bag it.
Printed by permission of the author. Email him at Lorenzatlarge@aol.com. Get Tracy’s latest book at BarnesandNoble.com or Amazon.com, or download it from www.fastpencil.com. Only $3.99, cheap.
