Emi wanted her and Isaac to dress up as ninja this year, which would normally raise my cultural appropriation hackles, but I let it go. I figured, they're 1/4 Japanese, so I can say it's an homage to their roots, ha ha ha.
Nonetheless, here are some best practices and lessons learned from this year's shenanigans:
1. Ninja were supposedly masters of stealth, and costumed ninja turned out to be no different: there is nothing in the world harder to keep track of than excited trick-or-treating kids dressed in ninja gear after dark. Next time, we are going to wrap them up in triple layers of glow necklaces!
2. Apparently, if you're a grown-ass woman, and you open the door really fast with a huge smile on your face because you are so excited to pass out candy, you will scare the children. And it also freaks them out when you refer to them as their character. Example: A well-intentioned "Hello there, Spiderman!" made a 3-year-old back away slowly and run back to his mama sans candy.
3. After they sorted their haul, I told the kids they could eat 5 pieces of candy tonight, which I thought was rather generous. Emi apparently got a full-size Hershey bar and stuffed it into her mouth before I realized what was going on. Apparently, I was not prepared to deal with a professional.
4. My candy-consumption tolerance has gone down immensely since I was a kid. I've had about 4 fun-sized Twix, and I feel like I can see through time. I AM A GOLDEN GOD!!!
PS: And because I'm a big nerd, here are this year's Halloween trick-or-treater statistics: 119 trick-or-treaters in 119 minutes, 6:25-8:24pm. Busiest half-hour segment was from 7:00-7:30....And at 8:54, college kids asking for candy ruin my beautiful 1 person/minute average. Goddamn outliers!
How was Halloween in your neighborhoods? Do you still get trick-or-treaters, or have the malls taken over candy duty?
This is the first of 30 daily NaBloPoMo posts this month! Thanks for tuning in!
