Mr. Fangs says "Happy Halloween"

Wednesday, October 31, 2007

This is our pumpkin this year. I guess he was supposed to be scary, but he came out kind of goofy. Oh well, he'll probably get smashed tonight anyway. I know I'd like to.

Don't get me wrong. It's not that I don't like Halloween. It's actually one of my favorite holidays behind Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter and my birthday. But the Halloween I knew and loved as a kid is a little different today.

First, as a parent, I now have to be concerned with my kids' safety. They sure as hell don't give a flying rat's ass about it, so we have to be extra vigilant. We have to worry about whether our neighborhood is safe (it isn't) and what could happen when knocking on strangers' doors (which they won't be doing in our neighborhood). Let alone where all that candy came from.

It's true, we won't be letting our kids trick-or-treat in our own neighborhood. We feel safe enough in our home, but we don't live in the, shall we say, affluent area of town, and we'd just as soon not have the kids trekking around the area after dark where God-knows-who is lurking in shadows waiting for a hapless victim. (You might think I'm kidding. I'm not.) We'll be driving to one of the more, ah, affluent neighborhoods.

Second, the Halloween I grew up with wasn't the adult holiday it is today. Sure, you still see jack-o-lanterns and goofy cutouts of cute ghosts and Frankenstein's monster. But what with television programming, movies and everything else modern pop culture throws at us today, it's not a holiday for the kiddies anymore. Sure, everyone laments about the loss of Christmas, but the loss of Halloween is happening, too.

Finally, I'm just frankly not looking forward to trekking in the cold for three hours. Maybe it was fun when I was a kid. Maybe it's fun for my kids (although, to listen to them complain, you wouldn't think so). But for me, the cold makes my joints ache. Thanks, but no thanks.

Anyway, have a safe and happy Halloween. Blah blah blah.