October 24/25, 2009

I went to get my hair adjusted last night. My friend Gary is truly a miracle worker.

At his station, he had easily six different kinds of candy. I took a little trick-or-treat pack of Starburst. But when I opened them, argh, two cherry ones. Under normal circumstances I do not eat cherry candy. It tastes like cough syrup. But I ate these. It's October, after all, when all candy is good candy.

I'm far, far, far past the age of trick-or-treating. I have a job. I make enough money to buy my own candy. I have a car. I can go to the store anytime I want and get gobs and gobs of whatever candy I think I might want.

But it's not the same.

I think the magic of trick-or-treating lies in the fact that it's completely a crap shoot. You don't know what you're going to get. You could get a whole bag of full-size Snickers (not likely) or you could get some crazy health-nut bag of granola bars and apples. Or you could get a handful of Sweetarts in the little 3-fer packages, a few Tootsie Rolls, some mini-versions of actual chocolate bars and some of those taffy's that you can't quite identify the flavor of but you know they're for Halloween because they're in orange and black waxed paper. 

When I was very little, trick-or-treating like you see in the movies was this mythical thing that just did not happen in my world. We would go to the elementary school Halloween night and go from classroom to classroom and that was it. Of course, this was in the middle of the desert. No sense in letting kids lose in the desert in the middle of the night where they might encounter truly horrific creatures.

So, I missed out on the real experience of trick-or-treating until we moved to Portland when I was 10. And at that point, I was on the verge of being too old. I went with my cousins a few times, with my youth group a couple times and then that was the end of it.

Until last year. Last year I went with Joe and Stacy and Angie and the kids to Stacy's parents' neighborhood. Stacy's dad and their neighbors compete to see who can make the best spiced wine for the parents of the neighborhood while they're accompanying the trick-or-treaters. How is this NOT THE BEST IDEA EVER? 

So, aside from it being a picture-perfect trick-or-treating neighborhood where every walkway is lined with carved pumpkins and dancing skeletons and any number of other decorations, there's spiced wine! Hot spiced wine!

Now, normally I would not suggest that you all run out and get yourselves mugs of hot spiced wine right before you stumble through the streets in the dark with teeming masses of small children asking strangers for candy, but I have to say, I think this is the way to go. After a little wine, you won't care what those stupid taffy's actually taste like.