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Trick ‘r Treat, Smell my Feet
My question of the day is, “Is this the best of times or the worst of times?”
I’m so confused! Somedays I look around at what LOML and I have and completely feel as if this is “the best of times” for us. On the very same day I think about all of the people who are struggling and help seems to be elusive for them and know “this is the worst of times”. The most difficult decision I have to make today, Sunday, is whether or not I’ll head over to Giant Tiger to pick up Hallowe’en treats. It’s not going to break me to buy treats for all of the kiddos who will stop by on Friday. This gets me thinking about all of the times I’ve wondered if every Trick’r Treater has had a decent meal or if they have a warm, clean and safe place to sleep or if their adults had enough money to buy treats to share with all of the little ghosts and goblins who might knock on their door—if they have a place to call home. I used to be a real “hard heart” about Hallowe’en. I grew up believing there should be a cutoff age for such shenanigans. In my early adult years I often grumbled about, and judged, the older youngsters who showed up without costumes wearing a bit of attitude, some with a sizeable chip on their shoulders. And then?
And then I thought about what it was like to be a teenager. When I was a teenager in the sixties we were expected to be adults. If we did teenager-type stuff we were told to “grow up and act our age”, which I now realize is exactly what we were doing. When we were still in secondary school we were expected to have part-time jobs to keep us in spending money, and for some, to financially contribute to the household. We had chores to do around the house. We had lots of homework, and corporal punishment at home and at school was still a thing. While we were being teenage adults we didn’t have a say in much of what was going on around us. Mostly our parents wanted us to be “seen and not heard”. My parents, like many of yours, had a “like it or lump it” approach to child rearing. And when our generation became parents, many of us did a great big about-turn on dealing with teenagers. Some of us wanted our children to have more, to be more, to experience more and to be seen. We wanted our children to have the freedom to speak up when they needed to be heard. We pushed them to be overachievers. But we still, sorta kinda, weren’t onboard with our teenagers being children. And as long as our ’80s and ’90s teenagers stayed out of trouble, did their homework and occasionally brought the dirty dishes down from their room to the kitchen and their stinky laundry from their bedroom floor to the washing machine, everything was okay. But, “no” trick or treating. That kind of fun, for some bizarre reason, was just for little kids.
And, here we are. LOML and I are enjoying the best of times. Hopefully we’ll have enough treats for all of the parents, the grandparents, the little kids, the big kids and the teenagers who drop by on Friday evening. We’re never too old, or too adult, to have a bit of spooky, sweet fun!
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