Hallowe’en 2022

Okay – first off, sometimes I feel as if I’m the only person who puts the apostrophe in Hallowe’en. I don’t particularly feel like it is more correct one way or the other – it’s just how I grew up spelling it, and I do like how it looks a little quaint. Hallowe’en apostrophes and Oxford commas for life!

I actually had to work, so I did not get to take the kids trick or treating. It was raining here almost all evening, and I was a little doubtful that the kids would make it very long. In 2019, it was super windy on Hallowe’en and we went over to a friend’s house to trick or treat and didn’t end up going out because we were nervous about the weather. Even though the kids had a great time playing with our friend’s kids, there were definitely tears on the way home when they realized that they didn’t get to go trick or treating. “It’s okay,” I told them, “We can always go next year.” Well, the pandemic proved me wrong on that point. Wump wump.

Anyhow, in light of that 2019 experience, I think that short of a tornado, I’ve decided that I will always let my kids go trick or treating. If they want to brave pouring rain in the pursuit of free candy – great! I’ll let them decide when to give up on the experience. Not that I really had much of a say in it this year since I was working. The Husband did text me in the morning:
“It’s supposed to rain tonight. She can’t go out in a cardboard box in the rain can she?”

Ah yes, the cardboard box. So costumes… The two littles wanted to be Star Wars characters, so when I saw that the Disney Store was having a 20% off sale on costumes in the last week of September, I ordered their costumes. The costumes arrived by the first week of October. I don’t think I’ve even had Hallowe’en costumes that early ever. The five year old was Darth Vadar and the baby was Baby Yoda. They were pretty excited.

The ten year old, however, had some costume ambitions. Last year, I built the five year old a Millenium Falcon that basically won Hallowe’en. I’m not being immodest – he got so many compliments on that costume. The ten year old decided that this year she wanted to have the Hallowe’en winning costume. So she decided to be….

… an iPod!

and here’s the back:

And here’s the other two kids “pushing” the buttons. As they are wont to do:

Looking at the costume now, it seems a pretty simple project, but it was actually more construction than is apparent. I didn’t have the right size box so I had to tape several pieces of cardboard together to get it to be the right dimensions. And then the whole thing took something like six cans of spray paint to make it silver. The best part, though, is that we taped a speaker and an iPod to the inside so that she could actually play music. By all accounts people, especially adults my age, loved the costume.

Earlier in the day, the ten year old’s school had a Hallowe’en parade and party. I managed to slip down to the school for the parade before going in to work. Of course the iPod was a little unwieldy to take to school, so we chose another costume for the ten year old. We originally came up with the idea of Waldo – because that seemed like it would be easy to pull off straight out of the closet – red and white striped shirt, jeans, red and white hat. We went to Party City on Sunday afternoon to look for a pair of glasses to finish out the Waldo look. The only glasses we could find, though, were in a set labelled “Judicial Costume.” Which… call a spade a spade, it was a Ruth Bader Ginsburg kit. We grabbed the kit for the glasses, and then the ten year old decided that she wanted to go as RBG instead of Waldo. I found a black robe that my mother-in-law had made for Hallowe’en for my sister-in-law when she was little. It had a large star embroidered on it, so we turned it inside out and it worked out pretty well. A tight low bun completed the costume. And it all fit inside a Ziploc bag, making it easier to take to school than a huge cardboard creation.

I had been on the fence as to whether or not to go to the school parade since I had to work, but I figured it might be the last Hallowe’en parade I’ll get to go to for the ten year old, and I want to make more of an effort to be present for her, so I went down and it ended up being a lot of fun. The kids all paraded around the parking lot into a big field where the principal made some announcements and there was a costume contest for the teachers, which is always hilarious to see. One of my favorite moments was watching how well the principal was at crowd control. He did that thing to settle the kids down where he claps a pattern and the kids clap it back to him. I’d seen teacher do it in classrooms, but to see a whole school do it was pretty cool. Then, my favorite quip – he said, “You all need to be quiet because I have a pretty bad PA system here.” (he had one of those hand held speakers attached to a microphone). “Tell you what,” he continued, “If you promise to be quiet and listen, I promise to look into getting a better PA system for next year.” I thought that was pretty funny. I didn’t stay for the classroom party, but I did get to wave at the ten year old before I left.

The five year old’s school doesn’t do Hallowe’en, so it was just a regular school day for him, though there was one kid dressed as a banana at the bus stop. I guess there’s no real stopping a kid if they want to dress up, right?

The baby’s daycare also does not do Hallowe’en, but they do have a Fall Pajama Party. She went to school in her Chewbacca pjs – so subversively in costume, I guess. Last week I had signed up to bring fruit, and then promptly forgot about that until 9pm on Sunday night. So Monday morning after doing the school bus drop off, I went to the grocery store, and picked up four packs of strawberries, washed and cut them up and took them to school just in time.

I had contemplated dressing up for the show that I was working that night – I even googled “Costumes in black” to find some ideas for costumes that would incorporate wearing my show blacks. Ironically RBG was one of the suggestions, and I even started to crochet a lace collar, but ultimately I feel really self conscious when in costume (or even part of a costume), so I didn’t follow through with it. The show was pretty uneventful – and I was home by 9:45pm, by which time, the Husband has put the kids all to bed already. I’m told that everyone had a great time despite the rain. The five year old insisted on wearing his Darth Vadar mask the whole time (and why not?) so he was a little bit slow, but he apparently loved his costume and his light saber.

Our neighborhood itself is pretty dark for Hallowe’en. We actually go trick or treating with our friends in their neighborhood, which sometimes I feel badly that we don’t have a more robust neighborhood for trick or treating. I didn’t carve a pumpkin this year, which I’m a little sad about, and we didn’t decorate. I did still buy some candy to leave out in a bowl, just in case, but no one came by. Actually come to think of it, I don’t know that the candy even got put out. I think this lack of trick or treaters is a combination of us living on cul de sac off a busy road, so people don’t cross into our street and also a lot of the houses are multi-unit rentals, so there is a lot of turnover. I do miss seeing costumed kiddos come to our door, though.

I was thinking last night, as I gazed at the buckets of candy on our dining room table, what a really fun holiday Hallowe’en is. First of all you get to dress up as whatever you want to be – your favorite character, your hero, a cool inanimate object… My co-worker’s nephew dressed up as a pickle! I love costumes, thinking about them, making them, seeing them. Then, you get to stay up late! Usually on a school night! And then you get to wander up to people, mostly strangers, yell at them, and they give you candy! And hopefully you remember your manners and say “Thank you!” There is so much to love about Hallowe’en.

(Incidentally, I once compared Hallowe’en to tech week – people in costume, wandering around in the dark, yelling demands at me, and there is an inordinate amount of sugar involved.)

I was also thinking too, about how strange Hallowe’en must seem to the post-COVID kids. After two years of social distancing and masking and play pods and “Stay in your bubble” and “Don’t share food!” and all that it must be so bewildering for kids who have never been trick or treating before to grasp the idea. “You mean, I put on this costume, and go up to strangers and take food from them? What a bizarre idea! Is this safe?” I feel like last year people were starting to get back in the swing of things, but there were definitely COVID precautions in place – the neighborhood we went to asked people to put the candy out on a table or something, and that the adults stay back and wave at the kids from six feet away. This year, by all accounts things were back in full force. Apparently the baby didn’t quite grasp the saying “Trick or Treat!” part of the ritual, but she was so cute that people gave her lots of candy anyway.

I don’t have a good strategy for managing the kids’ candy consumption. Right now the strategy is just barking, “Don’t eat that right now!” at the kids periodically when I catch them eating candy, and also a hefty dose of looking the other way and making sure they brush extra well. I think I would like it if the candy were gone by Thanksgiving. If the Husband had his way, it would be gone much sooner. I don’t love the idea of candy hanging out forever, but also throwing away food is a huge hang up of mine. I know candy isn’t really food and maybe I need to have a mental shift and get over that hump.

The top five candy that I would totally steal from my kids: Twix. 100 Grand. Reese’s Pieces. Sour Patch Kids. Dark Chocolate Milky Ways. Though I reserve the right to change my mind and just eat it all when they aren’t looking…