I wrote this last year…
You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Halloween from the inside out.
It doesn’t take a lot to dress up and ring a doorbell and say “Trick Or Treat.”
Mutants and mongoloids have been doing that for over 100 years.
The trick is handling the door from the inside out.
Halloween from the inside out is an art form all by itself.
Do you decorate your house with black and orange streamers? Do you put RIP signs on the front grass. Do you have spooky music playing, a strobe light, a Frankenstein monster that gargles tequilla?
Do you sit on the porch and wait for the Trick or Treaters? Do you have the door open so they know you are as excited they’re coming as they are to come?
Do you shut the door and make them wonder what is going to happen next?
After half a century, I’ve figured all this out. I could map it out for you and show you where X marks the spot for this sacred halloween moment, but out of respect to you and the halloweed institution of halloween, Ill let you do that yourself over a time of trial and error.
Do you remember your 1st time?
They say you always remember your 1st time.
Honestly I don’t remember the 1st time I opened the door and stared into the eyes of a 6 year old candy loving Satan face.
So it was exciting to me that my 15 year old son this year was having his first time.
Big kids handing candy to little kids.
It’s a passing of the torch.
It’s Friday night and I have to work.
Sad but true.
So I buy 3 big bags of deluxe candy and put it in a big bowl and place it on a stool.
“I need you to work the door for me,” I say over and over.
He is non-commital.
“OK, if i’m not going out.”
“Out?”
“Dad?”
The breveloquent communication between father and teen.
Friday night rolls around and he invites a high school buddy over.
He tells me the door begins ringing as the darkness envelopes our suburban neighborhood.
I don’t have time to dress up the house. No special lights or lawn art. Just a porch light and a full bowl of candy.
I ask my son how it went.
I thought I would get monolithic, teenage cave grunts.
Instead; I get a philosophical diatribe that apparently has forged a moment in his life.
Ding Dong.
“The door bell rings,” my 15 year old son says growing animated.
He is standing before me in the living room, acting out the complexity that is inside out halloween.
“Some kids are nice,” he blurts out. “Trick or trick,” they say. “Other kids just stand there, like sacks of flower. I don’t know how many kids are coming and I don’t know how much candy we have so I just say take two. The 1st kids take two and they say thanks and walk away. Then some other kids come up, like middle school kids, and they are douches. They don’t say hi or trick or treat. They just stand there. So I hold out the candy bowl and they stick their hands into the bowl like half way down.”
He is into full pantomime now, holding his pretend bowl with one hand.
“So the kid pushes his hand into the bowl and just grabs a handful of candy, and I say, like NO. And I’m like what are you doing? And they like stare at me like I’m crazy.”
“How old are they?” I ask.
“I don’t know, like middle school kid age.”
He quickly adds, “they were such douche bags!”
I laugh. It’s at this point I see that he has transitioned from outside trick or treating douche bag to inside trick or treat candy dissiminator.
“I just wanted to punch them in the face. A couple of kids knew it. They were middle school school losers. Then they pissed me off because they came back a 2nd time. They all ready had a ton of candy. And they came back a second time.”
“That’s bad business,” I say chirping in. “You don’t come back to a house a 2nd time. You expand your trick or treat map to include more candy rich homes to fill your pillow sack. Kids today are weak,” I say smiling.
“Yeah they’re such douche bags,” he says again, I think because he likes saying the words douche bags.
“They are standing behind a group that is already at the door, but I see them. I’m watching them. And as the kids at the door finish, the douche bags rush the stoop and one of the kids punches his hand into the bowl like he has a claw hand or something. My bowl is half full and now I’m really worried. How many kids are out there, still coming, what am I going to say when I’m out of candy. I look at them. Their costumes are bad.”
“What are they?”
“The douche bags are a football player a skeleton, maybe a turtle, I don’t know what he was. Then one of the kids blurts out, He has NFL candy? I’m like huh?”
“What was that about?”
“I guess that Snickers and the NFL have some sort of promotion. There are NFL teams on certain Snickers bars and I guess you bought those. And one of the kids says OMG I need that one. Suddenly we are like the candy house. “
“Did you tell them to get out.”
“No, but they stuck their hand in the bowl again. So I jerked it back.”
I laugh, realizing that he is fully engaged in the nuances and psychology of inside out trick or treating now.
“I said no. only two this time.”
So I jerked back the bowl, kind of hiding it inside the house, so they would have to invade my space to actually take candy. I was boiling inside I wanted to punch them all. But I felt happiness because I was holding the bowl inside the house.”
“Nice. you learned early to use the portal of the door as a candy buffer. smart. That usually takes years to develop.”
He smiles.
“Yeah it works great, it’s like on a timer. I let them have a few seconds to get the candy, then I start mvoing the bowl back to the door as if to say, times up. So then I see another group coming and I say OK, next group is here. And one kid turns around and in this high pitched voice he screams out loud; ” I don’t see anyone. I’m like in my head, what a douche bag. I turn to Hudson and say I want to kill them.”
Hudson is his friend, reportedly wants to kill them too.
His final assessment. “Kids are stupid. every kid was mean.”
Really?
And then he said, “well there was this 11 month old adorable tinker bell her 1st halloween and her daddy held her and she sat there said nothing but was cute.
And there it was promise for more halloweens to come.
Life’s Crazy™