"Boo!"

 Now, you can take that title to be a seasonal comment from little trick or treaters this time of year or you can interpret it as the way I feel about Halloween. You'd be safer taking it as my sentiment about
October 31st.  BOOOO....  I HATE Halloween!  Always have... There, I said it!

Not sure why, but it goes way back, to when I was a kid.  I mean, who, as a kid, doesn't like getting dressed up and getting free candy?  That would be ME!   Maybe it's from the time our candy was nabbed by a big Lindenwald neighborhood kid...  all that hard work for nothin'!  (I could never stand that kid after that.)  Maybe it's from being scared to death in haunted houses at LeSourdesville Lake, an area amusement park.  I don't know.  Even movie trailers, this time of year, advertising the scary movies of the season, have me leaving the room.

As a Mom, I lacked enthusiasm for the holiday too - just ask the boys.  I'm sure they could tell you about the lackluster, even embarrassing, costumes we came up with.  I think one of them had to be "Rocky" two years in a row...  Cowboys, Monsters, Mummies, putting costumes together with things we already had, or a quick trip to K-Mart for  one of those silky, cheap costumes they offered as salvation for unimaginative Moms.  I am so sorry, sons.

And as an adult, going to Halloween parties, I wasn't any more creative.  "Nerdy Girl" or "Slutty Woman" were the two characters I consistently dressed as.  Probably because, at different times in my married life, I had the attire, laying around the house,  that I needed to pull those looks off.  (That's kind of telling... and sad, at the same time, isn't it?)

I have always found it odd, that we spend years teaching our little ones not to take candy from strangers, and then turn them loose on one night and tell them to knock on doors and ask strangers for candy.  Bizarre....

I bet you're thinking it wouldn't be too much of a stretch if I went trick or treating as a crotchety old woman this year, would it?  Well, Trick or Treat!