I love Halloween, but there's something I've been missing about it in the past few years: the candy. And we all know that one of the best ways to get candy is trick or treating.
Society tells me I'm too old to go trick-or-treating. This alone isn't enough to stop me, but then things like Halloween parties come up and it doesn't happen.
I still really miss trick-or-treating. The last time I went was freshman year of high school. I wore a hooded sweatshirt and sunglasses and said I was the Unabomber. I don't think the neighborhood folks appreciated the fact that I was still trick or treating at 14, with a lame costume to boot. But still, I was getting candy for free and that was all that mattered.
In the following years I guess I felt too cool to go trick-or-treating'I was better than that. But now that I'm older and wiser I realize that you can never be too cool for free candy'and I start to get nostalgic thinking about the candy-filled days of old.
I loved how we would always carry around a pillowcase, expecting to fill the whole thing with sugary treats. I carried a Lifesavers pillowcase'you can't get more appropriate than that. We'd trek to multiple neighborhoods, debating their pros and cons. The big houses gave out better treats, but we could cover more area where the small houses were. And I loved that nothing would stop our candy quest'one year it snowed 30 inches on Halloween and we still went.
And when we got home, we would dump out our stash on the living room floor and separate the candy by type, counting how many Snickers bars or Reese's Peanut Butter Cups we had collected throughout the night. Then we'd brag to our friends. \I got six WHOLE candy bars AND a can of pop."" We'd leave the crappy orange and black chewy things aside for our parents or the trash can, and begin to stuff ourselves silly until our heads hurt from sugar overload.
Now Halloween has become a candyless void. I could go out and buy candy, but sugar is expensive these days. And it's just not as fun to buy it for myself. Where's the adventure in walking to Walgreen's to spend money to get one kind of candy? And the cashiers wouldn't say things like, ""Aww, what a cute little ladybug you are! Have another lollipop.""
It seems like once you reach a certain age, candy isn't something you're supposed to like anymore. We have to start eating more ""mature"" desserts like cheesecake or pie. Pie is nice and all, but can you suck on a piece of French silk on the way to class? Not very easily, which makes candy all the more convenient.
I still crave sugar in miniature, fun-filled packages, but I have the feeling I'm not going to be getting it for free, and that is just sad. Maybe I'll go buy some half-priced candy, give it to my roommate and then knock on our door saying, ""trick or treat!"" which is equally sad, but it will just have to do.
