Holiday Cheer

Round 1 of the holidays are over and we survived! I took a little over a month off from writing but I'm back now, if only for a little while.

I don't really consider Halloween a stressfull holiday. If anything it's relaxing. There is typically no snow yet, you don't really have to *do* anything if you don't want. You just get to stay at home, hand out candy, and after the trick or treaters are done, go to a movie or party, or just stay in with some popcorn and a scary movie.

My wife and I went to see Saw 2 on Halloween night. The movie wasn't as creepy as I thought it would be. In fact, I think the trick or treaters were creepier. I'll explain.

I was driving home that night, pulling into the neighborhood sometime after 6:00pm. There was nobody around, and it was super quiet. I stopped at the stop sign to get onto my street, I looked down at my radio to change songs, and when I looked up, there were people in costumes EVERYWHERE. I mean, there were so many people they spilled out into the street and I had to drive like 5 MPH, just to avoid hitting them.

A small army of minivans and SUVs had dumped platoons of children everywhere. By the time I pulled up to the house, the candy allocated for the event was already half gone, hoovered up by droves of pint sized people and questionably sized costumed individuals. I went upstairs to get settled and change into jeans.

I could hear "Trick or Treat!" being screamed every minute or so, with the front door barely being closed before the next round of screaming caped candy villains descended upon it. Once I had changed and showered I went downstairs to help out giving out the candy. I checked the bowl - 15 peices. Well, 14 now at any rate... While I was waiting for more people to arrive, a light went out on all the neighbors houses simultaneously. I glanced at the clock, 7:01. I peeked out the window and the street was empty. No cars, no kids, nothing. I opened up the door to try and listen to see if the rampaging circus had moved on, but I couldn't hear anything.

I double-checked my deoderant, just to be sure. Then went back inside. I left the outside light on for about 20 more minutes. The madness started about 6:00 when the street came alive with people & cars. Then, promptly at 7:00, everyone was gone.

While the event wasn't scary, per se. It ranks about a 7.0 on my weird-shit-o-meter. The next day I checked the front porch for candy, because if it were a paranormal event, the candy should be piled up on the front steps because you can't actually give candy to ghosts, right? I learned later that the township has meetings every week, and the week prior they said trick or treating was from 6pm-7pm. Any trick our treaters caught out past curfew were to be fed to a grue. Here I was thinking the roaming brute squad I glimpsed about 7:05 was just part of the show. -X_x-