Trick or Treating is for short people with no tests to study for

Meg Thompson
Commentary Editor

   I remember being 7 years old and staring at my older brother and sister in horror when they proclaimed they were too old to go trick or treating. Such an event was only meant for little kids, they said. Besides, they had better things to do, like sulk around contemplating their tragic emergence in the downward spiral of teen-age life, talk on the phone in the non-sensible slang of the 1980's and listen to Concrete Blond.

   I had every intention of trick or treating until I was at least 30. It would fit in perfectly with my career goal of being a professional milkshake engineer since I would have nights off and probably holidays. Why would anyone turn down the opportunity to dress up like a princess and run around in the night collecting free candy? What is it that happens to people older than 11 that makes them turn down what could possibly be the greatest experience in a year?

   I never figured it out, but the same thing happened to me. I eventually reached the point where I had no desire to put on a costume and carry around a plastic pumpkin to beg for bite size Milky Ways, Smarties and those hunks of caramel-colored glue in orange and black wrappers; the unsold remnants of more than a million made in 1973.

   Those were the types of candy no one wanted. But we took it anyway because the heavier the pillowcase, the cooler you were. We always knew what houses were going to dole it out. They had it every year. Perhaps it was their refusal to splurge and buy king size that made us eventually grow out of trick or treating.

    Even worse than the paste-with-no-taste chunks and dime-sized chocolate bars were the boxes of raisins and yellow apples. What exactly were these people thinking? I was fairly certain these individuals had to be different just for the sake of being different, much like the kids in high school with blue hair and ripped fish net stockings who ended all their sentences with "according to the prophecy."

   Maybe they were dentists, but one would think they would throw out Snickers and Reese Cups for job security.

    If your mom was anything like mine, every year you had the same costume. For six years, every Halloween I went as Girl in a Huge Winter Coat. If the temperature was below 75 degrees, my mom barricaded the door and wouldn't let me go anywhere until I was so thickly dressed I could not put my arms down. I suppose I could have been the little boy in "A Christmas Story." One year, she sewed me a clown costume so incredibly big that I wore my coat under it. I ended up looking really fat. I got a lot of raisins that year.

   Now, at the wise, old age of 20, do I sneer at all my trick or treating experiences? Do I view it as just a night where children can forage with their friends for empty calories and a few Golden Delicious apples?

   Basically, yes.

   To be truthful, I am jealous. I wish I could still tear through the housing developments of suburbia for an hour. I wish my sister would still taunt me at Easter that she still had a stockpile of Jolly Ranchers under her shoe rack. My Halloween nights are not nearly the same as what they used to be. Now I am studying, working, or anything else as equally boring. I stopped trick or treating for the same reason everyone else did;

    I got taller.

   But not that much taller. I am only five feet two inches. There are probably kids today trick or treating that are taller than I am. And I hope they enjoy it.

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