To trick, or not to treat?

Why is it that some folks try to make things so doggone complicated?

Consider the current existential issue surrounding the coming holiday evening – To trick or not to treat? Yes, that is the question.

As if it hasn’t disrupted enough of life on earth, that all pervasive virus has called into question the proper and traditional observation of All-Hallows’ Eve. It’s the subject of fevered suburban Zoom conferences, passionate child-care punditry, and even clever do-it-yourself columns  (A protective PVC candy chute, anyone?) – do we dare let the little darlings go door-to-door a-candy begging Saturday night?

To which I can only respond … Sheeeeeesh! Do what Dr. Fauci says -- wear a mask…you were probably going to be wearing one anyway.

It’s Halloween, after all…

Now it’s laudable that folks be concerned about the possibility of passing the unwanted bug around the neighborhood, but of all the holiday traditions one might choose to pursue, a momentary encounter standing on a windswept doorstep, masked, arms outstretched for a tightly-wrapped tidbit gingerly passed over a threshold is at exceptionally low risk for a infectious encounter of the viral kind. So far, to my research and knowledge, there is no confirmed case of contagion by Kit-Kat  -- which should be a source of (Almond) Joy for us all.

On the other hand, if scampering free and unfettered through the crisp night air poses little or no threat of COVID exposure, the brightly lit, climate controlled, adult-organized and closely supervised costumed soirees so much favored by concerned parents as of late pose no less a threat to public health than the super-spreader events enthusiastically hosted by a certain president and political organization that will for the moment go unnamed. Let it be said that the demise of both events would be a boon to all of America.

There’s no way around it, Halloween has really gone downhill since grownups started getting involved.

Y’know, by current standards, it surely seems that a generation or two ago parents didn’t like their kids very much. They let us run all over the place, ride bikes without helmets, swing on cold steel monkey bars high above a hard blacktop playground, call each other names, play baseball without uniforms, umps or trophies, shoot bb guns at blackbirds, fall out of trees, pee behind bushes. and breathe second-hand smoke in the doctor’s waiting room while we took our turn at getting stitched up after the latest mishap. Our parents counted noses around the breakfast table and again at supper – so long as the total was the same, all was right with the world.

Come Halloween we kids organized ourselves into feral hunter-gatherer gangs, carefully strategizing how best to roam the town to maximize return on the annual candy quest. Local lore was passed down from sixth graders to toddlers -- which house had the full-size Snickers, which dropped a meager Tootsie Roll or, even worse, an apple, into your bag. The night belonged to the kids – oh there might be a mother escorting a first-born toddler to a neighbor’s door, but no kid with decent self-respect would have submitted to trick-or-treating under the watchful eye of Mom. Nor would have any mother or father inflicted such humiliation on their own flesh and blood.

No, a parent’s place was in the home, or, in the case of the farmers who brought their kids to town, in the local tavern, happy to be sucking down 3.2 Schmidt while the kids roamed the streets doing what kids were wont to do on Halloween – and those were the days when there was still trick in trick or treat. Let it be said that for two weeks before the holiday responsible local grocers were reluctant to sell eggs, Ivory Soap, Paro-Wax, shaving cream or dauber shoe-polish to unaccompanied minors.

No worry about that now. There are no unaccompanied minors anymore.

And Halloween is safe and exciting as Sunday school.

Too bad, that.