The last time I went trick or treating was in the mid-90s with my niece and nephew. At the time I was horrified that their mother had never taken them on the risky venture of knocking on doors and begging for candy.
I don’t remember what the kids wore. It was cold enough that night in Las Vegas that we needed coats. We walked down the street, knocked on doors, and I taught them that little rhyme I learned as a child—
“Trick or treat.
Smell my feet.
Give me something
good to eat.”
Every child should know that rhyme because when you sing-song it to the treaters, they will definitely give you a LOT of candy.
It was the last time I took someone trick or treating. We had a blast. We laughed, talked, and sang until it was too cold. Then we went back to the house and drank hot chocolate. Our noses and hands were red, and we were giggling.
It sometimes seems like yesterday. But, it was long before I became ill with a chronic disease and eventually had to go on dialysis.
When my late-hubby was alive, we would turn off all of the lights so that the little ones wouldn’t knock on our door. He usually worked on that day so he was extremely tired. As I remember it, as the cancer took him, he was tired most of the time.
Many years before he and some of his friends made a ceramic skull. They would put a walkie-talkie in the skull and when the children walked up to the porch. He would say through the skull—
“Trick or treat.”
The kids would giggle and say, “uh-huh.. we are supposed to say trick or treat.”
The skull would argue with them until finally one of the kids would tell a joke. Then the skull would let them have one small candy bar. He and his friends had all of the kids snowed. And the kids really believed that the skull was alive.
Nowadays the little kids don’t come to our apartment complex. They go to parties and get little bags of candy. I don’t even know if they bob for apples anymore. I did that once and my sisters used to think it was fun to bop me on the back of my head. I’d come up from the water, missing the apple, and soaking wet. That one turned into an apple and water fight.
I’m not sure what I will be doing this year. I have more options. Maybe I will go to a dance or maybe I will cuddle with the doggy and remember all of the loved ones I have lost.