About Last Night

Yesterday's post did kind of make it seem as though I live in an inner city 'hood, did it not?

Nope, we live in the 'burbs.

Complete with park, tree-lined streets, and a Starbucks, no less. Ours is a working class, "inner ring" suburb (meaning it shares a border with the city), but still.

It's not like there's graffiti on the walls, gangtas on the corner, or Nikes dangling from the power lines, you know?

Which is why the whole idea that people are conducting drug transactions just a stone's throw away is that much more disconcerting.

But the neighborhood's going to hell in a hand basket didn't stop the family Rama from trick-or-treating last night.

Despite the fact that, wouldn't you know it, the J-dog's getup turned out to be more of a female zebra costume (the purse it came with did not give it away for me, folks) and, let's face it, the V-meister's butterfly outfit was more fairy duds than anything else, a good time was had by all, once we finally hit the streets.

Five Minutes Earlier

While I did stoop duty, the P-dog took the kids to a few houses of people we knew whose background checks had come back from Quantico in time for the festivities.

They stayed away from electric fence guy and can lady.

Is it just a 'hood phenomenon, or are the kids by you also no longer finding it necessary to say "Trick or Treat"? Because everyone who came by our house, save for the very smallest goblins, just stood with bags outstretched, waiting for the goods.

I demanded every one of them say it (with feeling) before giving them their penny.

But my heart sank, then curled a little around the edges when I saw the V-meister stare longingly at the glow-sticks and plastic pumpkin candy buckets it seemed the whole universe was parading around with.

She herself was toting a plastic grocery bag with the words Thank You! emblazoned across the front. (Poetic, if I do say so, myself.)

The thought that these accessories were now de rigeur for anyone who's anyone among the trick-or-treating set just never crossed my mind.

And as I thought of our only Halloween decoration, the forlorn little pumpkin with the drawn on face sitting on the stoop, I became rather disappointed with myself for my general lack of fervor when it comes to decorating and buying for the bulk of the manufactured holidays.

I just don't go all out the way most people (it seems) this side of the equator do, and the V-meister is reaching the age where she is taking notice.

Dangit.

Not sure what to do about that, exactly. I don't want to be a slave to the retail industry, but I don't want my kids to feel cheated, either.

Then again, a grocery bag full of "fun size" candy bars is nothing to sneeze at.

You can pack mo bettah treats into that sucker than a plastic bucket, yo.