Tuesday, November 1, 2011

"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!


5 comments:

  1. It sounds like a good time was had by all at your front door. If you buy 6 bags of candy next year, and the weather is rainy (oh I forgot, it doesn't rain much there, does it) you may be stuck eating candy for a long time. Of course, you could load up the Christmas stockings with left overs! LOL

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh my goodness... I cannot believe you had so many trick or treaters!! We barely had 20... not sure what was going on in my neighborhood but I have a TON of candy left over!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hahahaah.... Sounds like a busy evening for you.

    I live in a Cul de Sac, and we never get a lot.... so the neighbors all decided to all meet under a tent that we put at the end of the street. That way the kids would not have to walk through our street. They could get the candy from each one of us under the tent.
    We had a great time just laughing and talking. I think we may have had 60 kids in all.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow! This is the first account I've heard of Halloween this year that didn't mention the lack of Trick-or-Treaters. Nice to see the tradition continuing, and that the kids were so polite.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Wow, that's what Halloween was like in the 1960's when I was a kid. There were so many kids running from house to house, it looked like a swarm of bees.

    Love the first photo!

    Mellodee - what is 'blogging without obligation?" I see it in your sidebar.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks so much for leaving a comment. It's really nice knowing what you think!! Besides, comments keep me from feeling like I'm here all by myself!! :)

You might also like....

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...