The Morning After

I don’t know why I bother.

I live in an area in the country where there are 8-10 houses, 200 feet apart, on a dirt road, then nothing for about a half mile, then another smattering of homes. There’s a trailer park down the road, too. I see children in the mornings, gathered at the edge of the road or in their parents’ cars, waiting for the yellow school buses to come. We wave as I drive past them on my way to work. I don’t know any of them, except for one boy down the street who stops now and then to pet my dogs – and I know his face and where he lives, but I don’t know his name.

So at Halloween I buy candy. I pour it into a large bowl and keep it on a table by the door, just in case one of those youngsters finds his way to my well-lit front porch. I have this ‘if you fill it, they will come’ mentality, I guess.  But the last one came in 2005.

They go by carloads into town where they can trek up and down the streets of more populated areas and receive a larger ‘haul’ than they can in this neighborhood. And surely another part of it is the fear pervading the air that one of the houses out here, where nobody knows their neighbors, may be dangerous. The churches have started having Halloween parties, too, to keep the kids off the streets.

Tucker – 2013

I understand all of this, but I miss Trick-or-Treaters. Twenty years ago I lived in one of those city neighborhoods, and had lots of them. I miss the toddlers who haven’t a clue to what is going on, except that they get to play dress-up and get CANDY. I miss the 8-10 year olds who think that if they really try, they will scare someone. And I remember griping about teenagers who rang the doorbell after 10, long after the cute princesses and goblins and pirates had gone home to bed.  Now I’d even like to see some of them.

Through this process of purchasing and non-distribution I learned to buy candies that I like, because I will be the one that consumes them. In the past few years, I’ve kept a little and taken the rest to work, where I, along with other co-workers, filled a large jar in the entry for visitors and for us to snack on in the coming months. This morning we will again pass by the jar, dumping our leftovers into it, and ask each other why we bought so much this year.

Those little Mars and Hershey bars stare at me, tempting, and are the beginning of the season’s annual ‘drop the diet’ campaign.  I’ll start it again, having regained 5 or 10 pounds, on the upswing of the yo-yo in January when the gym has its joining specials.