I really like Halloween. I’m not really a sweets person nowadays, as opposed to when I was a kid.
For me, my favourite part of Halloween is putting a fright into people.
Now, I’m not talking about lame jump scares but rather just putting a really good costume together.
Some of my proudest achievements include dressing up as a clown so scary one of my adult friends got back into the elevator she had just come out of and took it back down.
On another occasion, I dressed so scary children would send their parents up to go get candy.
My wife took the baby, as well as some of her friends and their babies, to show off their costumes to their grandmothers; quite a cute ensemble altogether.
Sadly, this year due to a variety of reasons, Halloween kind of just slipped by for me. I’m sure I’m not the only one, whether it’s due to work, family or other obligations.
When I was young, growing up in the Netherlands, we didn’t celebrate Halloween which was a little too bad because, given the monsters that we were, we wouldn’t even have had to dress up. We did have a different event where costumes were the norm but there was no candy involved there
However, in a similar tradition to Halloween, we would go around knocking on people’s door, sing songs and get candy on Nov. 11 in celebration of the Christian saint Maarten van Tours.
One year, on Nov. 10 I was over at a friend’s house.
I don’t remember exactly how old we were but it was in the lower grades of elementary school.
In my usual scheming ways, I came up with a plan; we figured not everyone would be on the ball enough to realize the day before, when the doorbell rings and the door opens to little kids singing, that it was the wrong day.
Let me tell you, we figured right.
Whether it was because people really didn’t know or simply because they felt bad for these little kids who were obviously very confused, out of every 20 doors there would only be the odd few who would tell us that we had the wrong day.
Turns out, if you’re enterprising enough, you can have “Halloween” twice in one year.
Also, I really hope my offspring will behave better than I do by the time they get to be of an enterprising age.