Since we have lived on this street--thirty years now--the rest of the village have called it the 'new subdivision'. Kind of gives you an idea of the pace of life in a rural village. Anyhow from the first year we were here hordes of revelers have rung our bell every year looking for treats. Ordinarily that would not be a problem but the important word here is hordes. Cars come and park at one end of our street and the kids jump out on the run to hit every house. I'm not sure where all the cars come from but somehow our subdivision has become the mecca for treat-hungry kids. Every year somewhere between 160 and 200 kids ring our bell and most of them have no time for anything but grabbing their candy and running.
Lest you are wondering we do love kids and we like Halloween. The little ones all dressed up are cute as can be. We have fun with them and enjoy chatting up the parents who are watchful just out of the light from our porch.
Several years ago we really got into the swing of things. We bought alien costumes from Wal-Mart and adopted voices from outer space. (The picture at right is a pretty good likeness.) We loved hearing the doorbell ring. The little ones were pretty scared but Mom or Dad would encourage them and they helped themselves to the candy we held out. Occasionally one would balk and run back to their parent. The funniest one was a girl about 12 or 14 who started up the walk at the head of her group of teens. In my growly voice, I asked, "What do you want?" She stopped dead, looked at her friends, and took another couple of steps towards us. "Why are you here?" hubby growled. The girl turned on her heel and beat a retreat, calling out, "I'm getting out of here!" Her friends followed and we laughed to ourselves.
Do we sound mean? I assure you we are not. We just decided to make Halloween about the little ones. To them we were very nice and tried our best not to frighten them, even going so far as to use our natural voices. All too soon our candy was gone and we decided to go over to our daughter's house. She was away on a course but her hubby was there on the porch giving candy to little ones as we approached.
"You guys are pretty big for this, aren't you?" he asked. We just grunted, afraid he'd recognize us. He held out the candy dish and we declined, shaking our alien heads. He stood there at a loss. Thinking our son-in-law knew us, hubby started to walk past him into his house. Before our eyes our calm and friendly son-in-law became Godzilla. "Where do you think you're going?" he growled.
"Just into the house," we laughed.
"No, you're not!" and his body filled the doorway.
As always in tricky situations, I started to laugh. Hubby started to laugh. And after a minute or two, son-in-law started to laugh, too, as he realized the joke.
That was a great Halloween and the memories make me smile again. I guess this year we are just too busy, with hubby teaching two nights this week, planning a community event for one night and working full time during the day. So, this year, we're just not in the mood, but next year the aliens may invade again.
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