October Frights Blog Hop Day 8: 5 Things I Loved Most About Halloween as a Kid

5 Things I Loved Most About
Halloween as a Kid

1. THE CANDY!

What, are you freakin' kidding me? Of course #1 was the candy! Great googly moogly, my brothers and I used to coerce our mother into giving us the biggest pillow cases we had. Those were our loot bags, ready to be filled with incomparable sweet treasures by way of a legalized-one-night-out-of-the-year implied threat and ultimatum: Give us some candy, or be prepared to get Punk'd with a potentially nasty surprise!

With visions of Snickers, Milky Way, 3 Musketeers, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, M&Ms, and a veritable cornucopia of coma-inducing chocolates and other sweet treats guaranteed to bring on a temporary diabetic reaction from a gastronomic gluttony of a sugar overdose filling our wicked little minds, we fled our lair in the darkening twilight dressed in our homemade costumes to terrorize neighbors to whom we were supposed to be unfailingly polite and friendly the other 364 days out of the year.

This was OUR night! No adults allowed... well, except for the requisite chaperoning for the littlest witches, goblins, ghouls, vampires, werewolves, and other various frightful creature disguises intended to send our friends and neighbors into cardiac arrest due to the sheer terror our shocking wardrobes were sure to induce.

Don't try to be friendly or cute with compliments on our horrifying costumes and accessories; don't make small talk; don't act like you think you know us. You don't. We're creatures of the darkness, children of the night. Just shut up and give us buckets, bags, pillow cases, and plastic orange jack-o-lanterns full of CANDY!!!

Hell yeah, bring on the bellyache.

2. BEING CUT LOOSE FROM THE PARENTAL UNITS!

Only on this one unholy, fright-filled night--when we were deemed "old enough" by elders we generally chose to ignore as much as possible --we cut that annoying, cloying, intrusive parental tether with extreme prejudice so we could consume mass quantities of candy!

Ah, sweet freedom! Your delectable taste was nearly as enticing, tantalizing, and titillating as the treasure trove of scrumptious sweetness we were sure to be lugging homeward and stuffing our guts with when our bags and buckets were finally crammed to the brim and overflowing. And with our most irresistible smiles, my brothers and I often cajoled our parents into letting us take a second trip!

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Kevin, dump your stash over there; Kerry, empty your massive bag over here; Kolan, put yours there on the couch... and we were off again with freshly emptied pillow cases and an aching desire that could only be experienced in childhood to collect enough individually wrapped candies and treats to last through Christmas.

One night out of the year only, we became the demons and devils and goblins that our costumes represented, the fierce creatures of the night that we imagined ourselves to be, free to scare the living daylights out of everyone we encountered with our master- ful disguises, free from that nagging compulsion to behave like goody two-shoes little boys and girls, free from that stifling parental restraint!

On Halloween night, best of all, our imaginations were set free. And as many of you know, I've always had a very vivid and overactive imagination.

Let the frightmares commence, baby, it's HALLOWEEN!!!

3. THE HOMEMADE COSTUMES!

Party City?!?! We don't need no stinkin' Party City! In fact, there was no such thing as Party City - or a Halloween Costume store or the Internet, for that matter - when I was a kid.

We made our own costumes, Jack. Or rather, our mothers made our costumes (sometimes with a little help from enthusiastic fathers wanting to experience the frightful joy vicariously), with a bit of help from us in the encouragement and "No, do it like this!" departments.

We were each fully confident that our costume was the best, the wickedest, the most inventive, just the coolest damn thing ever... besides Halloween and all the candy we confiscated from neigh- bors that we generally managed to avoid the rest of the year, of course.

Batman and Robin, Gale Sayers and Roger Staubach, Captain America and The Incredible Hulk (hey, they were comic book characters back then before they starred in movies) for the boys, witches and pretty little princesses for the girls; you name it, we became it.

And we didn't need any pre-fab blockbuster movie's merchan- dising department or outrageously overpriced online costume stores to tell us who to be or how to dress for it. All we needed was our imaginations. We were the bomb dot com, baby!

...and then of course there's the Halloween dog costumes!

4. The Unprecedented Unmitigated FUN!

By George, we had a BLAST! I still remember the thrills and excitement that built up for days before Halloween finally came. It was about candy big time, yes, but it was also about the FUN. Days before Halloween, you couldn't restrain me with industrial strength chains. I was pumped, psyched, planning in my adolescent mind the exciting escapades to come on the one night a year our wicked little inner demons were finally set free to ravage, terrorize, and blackmail our stuffy neighbors. In my childhood, the thrills accompanying Halloween were second only to that unbeatable Christmas morning magic.

Trick-or-Treating was its own form of magic, a time for our devious imaginations to let the monsters inside us loose, set them free. I hope that parents of my generation remember that excitement, and share it in any way that they can with the young Trick-or-Treaters of today.

5. NO FEAR OF PREDATORS!

This is a tough one for me, personally. When I was a kid (yeah, I know I'm showing my age), we never heard of people sticking razor blades in candy apples, injecting Ex-Lax (or worse) into the candies, or poisoning homemade cookies and brownies (yes, we had three women in our neighborhood who gave those out instead of pre-packaged candies, and they were delicious!).

We never heard of sick human predators hiding out in the bushes and culverts waiting to snatch little wandering ghouls and goblins - although we all know they were out there, even yesteryear.

It was a kinder, more innocent and more trusting time in our nation's history. Parents didn't have to anguish over their children's safety... even though they doubtlessly did, to the point of chewing their nails to the quick and tearing their hair out - but that anguish and fear wasn't singular to just Halloween. Caring parents always worry about their little goblins, ghouls, witches, demons, hellions, cowboys, cowgirls, princes, princesses, and Stormtroopers. That's no different today than it was when I was but a wee precocious lad, and that's just as it should be.

Our children rely on us to look out for them, and protect them from evil. So woe be unto any predators who ever endanger our youth and cross MY path.

Nowadays, grocery stores, malls, churches, schools, and various responsible neighborhood communities organize their own form of "safe" Trick-or-Treating, and I'm proud of those honorable people who coordinate and orchestrate these events in an effort to keep the Great Tradition alive today. They remember the fun, costumes, excitement, and most of all, the gobs and scads and buckets full of candy, candy, candy.

So bring on the Trick-or-Treaters! They're safe in MY neighborhood. I have a ginormous tray full of all the best candy for them... and I don't even need a costume to look scary when they come to my door, lol.

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Join me and my fellow horror and paranormal authors for the October Frights Blog Hop:

I heartily welcome all comments, opinions, and suggestions, so don't be shy! Share your own thoughts about your Halloween experiences as a kid.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYBODY!