"I Got Plenty of Nothin' "

They started arriving at about 6:30 p.m.  It wasn't even dark yet, which was unusual in and of itself.  The came in hordes, with full-grown witches, and baseball players, and even a pilot, as escorts who walked down the middle of the street.  Their charges ran at top speed in five different directions up to the doors.  Sometimes they rang the doorbell, more often they knocked, and a time or two they peered in through the glass window. 

The first few sets were my favorites.  The little bitty kids, sometimes being carried, sometimes carrying pillowcases almost bigger than they were.  They would be clinging to the witch's or pilot's (mom or dad) hand for all they were worth.  Eyes big and very unsure of what was supposed to be  happening.  After prompting they would either whisper or holler, some variation of "Trick or Treat" and look straight up at me as I brought the basket to the door.  This group you have to watch closely.  They are fond of pushing their whole hand into the candy basket and grabbing as much as they can hold.  Almost always they put it back when mom or dad says so.  They watched me drop 2 pieces of some candy or other into their pillowcase or pumpkin and turn around to leave.  As they start to run (or toddle quickly) the mom or dad prompts again "Say thank you!" or "Happy Halloween".  When the little angel, cowboy, ninja, princess, or raggedy ann, repeats the phrase it sometimes even sounds like "thank you" or "happy Halloween".  Not always you understand, but sometimes.

As darkness fell the kids got progressively older.  The costumes got progressively more clever and they groups got bigger and louder and more exuberant!  Nobody needed prompting; they started yelling trick or treat in the driveway!  And they just kept coming! 

At 7:40 p.m. I opened the last of the big bags of candy.  Adding up all the candy we had bought, there were about 400 individual pieces of candy.  By about 8:15 p.m. even though I had cut back to one piece each, I ran out of candy!  And still they came!  

I started handing out pennies!  By that time it was mostly teens and bigger kids. I had to admit that "I Got Plenty of Nothin'.  I kept apologizing that I had no more candy, but the kids uniformly were gracious and accepted the couple of pennies each with aplomb!  I lost track of how many pennies I gave out, but it was probably around 50 or 60 cents total, but that means there were at least 25 more kids after I ran out of Twizzlers, Jolly Rogers, Paydays, and lollipops!  It was obvious I wasn't the only one to run out of candy as one by one neighboring houses turned off their outside lights, the universal signal that Halloween was over at that house!

At 8:30 the rush slowed to a trickle and by 8:45 it was done.  The were gone like they had never been there at all. Not a ghost, or a zombie, or a ballerina in sight.  Vanished into the night.  The street remained empty.  Silence returned to the neighborhood.  I turned off our outside lights.

After being descended upon by somewhere between 250 and 275 costumed, polite, well-behaved children, Halloween was over at our house!

I guess next year we'll have to buy six big bags of candy!  Maybe I should just get "Good 'n' Plenty" (remember them?) to begin with....lol!...or I'll end up with Plenty of Nothin' all over again!