Halloween Rudeness

Hope your Halloween festivities were fun and delightful.  We had a pretty good Halloween, and the kiddos really did.  Cutie and Junior made out like bandits with about 10 pounds of candy from an hour of trick-or-treating.  Not too shabby.  They were ready to go home and eat some of their loot before we were, so that was good and they only ended up with enough candy to last until Christmas instead of Easter.  Yay!

I have two major gripes with people in general, one of which is rudeness and the other is inconsideration.  They seem to go hand in hand with people, a chicken or the egg type of thing, but really you could be rude and know you’re being rude/inconsiderate, and you could be inconsiderate but not really think it through… okay, I guess they are hand in hand…

Everyone knows about last night’s festivities of begging neighbors for candy  trick-or-treating; it’s not like it is a new concept.  I mean, it’s been around since the late 1800’s -early 1900’s as a way to keep destructive and bored youth from vandalizing your property.  If you don’t know the history, here’s a brief synopsis.  Kids used to go around and vandalizing property on All Hallows Eve, so people decided to “treat” the kids to candy (which back then were a huge thing because it was more of a luxury) and in turn those kids wouldn’t destroy the homeowner’s property.  This evolved into the whole “trick-or-treat” notion; with the ‘treat’ being candy and the ‘trick’ being vandalism.  Fast forward a 100+ years later, and we have kids doing what they do- still have some vandalizing kids with eggs/t.p/soaping windows/etc. but other than that pretty uneventful with a bunch of candy collected…ah, I digress- back to my point story.

With trick-or-treating comes a certain amount of etiquette/protocol for each home.

1. Have candy ready for your local neighborhood trick-or-treaters.
2. Turn on outside light to indicate you have candy.
3. Answer door to kids.
4. Hand out candy appropriately.
5. Repeat Steps 3 & 4 until said candy is gone.
6. Turn off outside light to indicate candy is gone.

Seems rather simple, not too involved- you could even leave your candy in a bowl on your doorstep if you don't want to answer your door and have the kids self-serve, wait in your driveway and get them there, etc.  Really, the key indicator is the outside light being either “on” or “off” indicating whether you have candy or not.

I understand the economy is crappy, you might have lost your job and couldn’t buy candy, forgot to buy candy, you might be out of candy early, maybe you ate the candy, who cares really- and I know it is “free candy” to the little kids and why complain about a “free thing” right?  Well, here’s why.  If you leave your outside porch light on- at 6 pm when it is still light outside- and have your doorbell ring- don’t scramble by the door, lock your deadbolt, move the curtain by the door and shut your light off with two little kids on your porch!  Answer the door and politely say; “I’m sorry, I am out of candy” or something along those lines- don’t be rude by acting like that- because back when I was a kid, you’ve woke up to t.p. in your bushes/hedges/trees, soap on your car windows, and eggs on your house.

So… how was your Halloween?

Similarity to any real person other than myself is purely unfortunate for them coincidental, this is my story so please don't be an ass and copy/use it as your own.