My parents somehow decided to give out candy tonight for the first time in at least 25 years - they hate children, but when my 84-year old father walks to the end of the driveway to get the mail every day, he recently has been running into a couple of mothers accompanied by children, repeatedly enough that he awkwardly blurted out an invitation for them to come for Halloween!
And then he PANICKED and spent two weeks planning and emailing me and writing down lists for Raul and arguing about every little detail with my mother. Who should buy the candy? Should we invite them all the way inside the house? Maybe Susan has some costumes and decorations? (Yes! Calm down!)
Raul was FORCED to buy and carve a beautiful jack-o-lantern, and we brought extra candy and all the stuff. My father had gone and knocked on the doors of the TWO HOUSES repeatedly to find out EXACTLY when they would arrive. One family at 5:15 and the other would not commit to a particular time! We were all told the lights would be off and the door locked at 6pm sharp!
Maybe no one will show up! Raul will not let me post pictures!
So at 5:15 EVERYBODY shows up at once. Four tiny children with five (?) adults. I am entertaining up a storm with the candy and the apple cider as everybody is hanging around inside the entryway! The two tiniest children are a Narwhal Princess and a Dinosaur Dragon. The Dinosaur Dragon kept GROWLING, which endeared him to me, but really freaked out my parents!
A note on the candy: my mother ALWAYS used to give the WORST candy. The cheapest no-name hard candy that nobody wants. How did she get a giant bowl of this terrible candy? Could it be the EXACT SAME candy from 1978 that she kept in a jar and served AGAIN the next year because none of us wanted to eat it? Did she bring that jar of candy from Pittsburgh in 1983? The assortment includes MINTS FROM RESTAURANTS. My father had bought normal candy but only four Snickers bars, for, like, family only. He bought them at Office Depot and they were stale.
I quickly added our bag of normal candy to the mix without them noticing. The children all went for the name brands, so, ok, good.
Meanwhile, the tiny Narwhal Princess girl. The first thing she does immediately upon getting through the front door, is LUNGE at my mother’s OXYGEN TANK. Straight for the controls and turns it OFF. Like LIGHTNING the girl’s mother jumps in and turns the tank back ON before anyone but I had noticed!
No wonder my parents hate children. The children are trying to MURDER THEM.
Next my mother has a delicate glass musical snow globe of New York City, I have no idea why, in her hands and she’s offering it to the children to play with! It is GLASS. It is EXPENSIVE. The two children are really excited about pounding on it and, you know, maybe smashing it against something. The three of us sort of juggle the snow globe for a few minutes until I get it out of their reach.
And then everybody is done and they politely take their leave. My mother has asked the random adults to play bridge and some of them say they will do so! They would never teach me to play bridge and I have begged them!
Then we go home and I go Reverse-Trick-or-Treating and leave a generous handful of the good candy on the doorsteps of nine of our nearest apartment neighbors even though we don’t know any of them.
Happy Halloween!