The Sweetie Chronicles

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~William Wordsworth

Why Halloween Was Better When I Was A Kid


I have always thought that Halloween was a fun holiday. I mean, what's not to love? You get to dress up as whatever you want, people give you tons of candy, and everyone goes out of their way to scare the shit out of you. There are times when I wonder if it's half as much fun for kids now as it was back then. First of all, we never really worried about our safety too much. Sure, my parents made me throw out any unwrapped candy just in case it was poisoned or something, but that was about it. No one ever talked to me about scary child molesters lurking in the dark waiting to snatch me up. And if they had, I would have probably thought it was a trick to scare me.

Also, we used our imagination when we came up with our costumes. We spent the week leading up to Halloween going through Mom's closet and talking to friends about what we could borrow so that we could create the perfect costume. These days, parents just go to Walmart and buy one for $20, and that's that. It can't be that much fun for a kid to just put on a costume. They are totally missing out on the fun of figuring it out for yourself using things in your very own closet.

The biggest reason of all, though, has more to do with the "scary" parts of Halloween. Our teachers used to read scary ghost stories and turn out the lights, and I fucking loved that. These days? Forget it! Kids can't dress up in their costumes for school. Teachers can't do anything scarier than have their kids color pictures of pumpkins. And everyone is scared of what might happen if a child under the age of 13 is actually afraid of something. I have a strong suspicion that the end result of this mamby-pamby treatment of America's children is going to be a nation of total pussies.

The saddest part is that parents refuse to let their kids get scared or knock on a stranger's door or dress up for school... BUT they will let their morbidly obese 2nd grader bring home a giant fucking bag of candy and keep it in his room so he can get up in the middle of the night and add more pounds onto his already over-stressed little body.

As much as it sucks, the Halloween of my childhood is gone. All I can do now is try to have my own adult version of fun (which includes dressing up of course, and drinking) and wait until I have children of my own someday. For all of you out there who remember the good times when Halloween was scary and fun and innocent, Happy Halloween!

1 comments:

tonya October 31, 2008 at 10:14 AM  

Most of all i remember my last year dressing up , momma wrapped me in a orange tableclothe and i had a tinsle wig from six flags with a million diff colors in it, it was when walk like an egyption was popular and so i was an egytpion and daddy had rigged a dummy in a chair in the front yard and had a speaker under its hat rigged to the truck and we scared the hell outta all of the kids that came up , hell half of them got within a foot of the dummy and daddy would say somthing scary and they would run back to their cars and not come back up, it was soooo much fun i loved it, and one of the best memories!! or when i was 5 and they dressed me in one of mommas corsets and i was May West, it was completely backwards on me by the time i got home, and that year we took around an extra bag for mickey casue she was home with broke leg ( nevermind the fact that she was 18 years old) we still got her candy!! thanks for bringing back alot of good memories with this post !!! love ya, i will try to post today, got alot to talk about!!! and i will def post on monday with pics of my little bumble bee!!

Sarra Cannon

Young Adult Indie Author

I always secretly wanted to be a cheerleader. And a witch. Now, I write about both. The first five novels in my Peachville High Demons Young Adult Paranormal series are available now in ebook!
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