I took Charlie trick-or-treating last night while Elysha took Clara and friends.
Charlie and I had a great time. Admittedly, it was more fun when Elysha and I took the two kids together when they were little, but given that our kids are 16 and 13 and are still willing to spend Halloween with us, I’m feeling lucky.
Charlie is also the paragon of manners while trick-or-treating. “Thank you” and “Have a good night” at every house.
About halfway through the night, Charlie stopped at a house and knocked on the door. A man answered, and a conversation ensued.
Seven minutes long. Which, in Halloween minutes, is 19 days.
As Charlie was speaking to the man, Elysha texted to see how it was going, so I exchanged messages as Charlie continued to talk.
Seven minutes!
I assumed he had run into a teacher or Scout leader. Someone he knew well, whom he wanted to talk to, because typically, Charlie can extract himself from any conversation he doesn’t like or want.
Finally, he came back down the walk.
“Who was that?” I asked as we moved on.
“Dad!” Charlie said. “That guy was totally drunk. He kept telling me the same thing over and over again. He fist bumped me three times. He’s got stacks and stacks of boxes and stuff in his house. He’s some kind of drunken hoarder.”
Little did I know.
“Sorry,” I said. “I thought you were having a good conversation.”
“I was flashing SOS to you with my flashlight the whole time!”
I hadn’t noticed.
Oh well.
We made a note to avoid that house next year.
Halloween is an absolutely safe holiday for anyone who wants to send their children out trick-or-treating. Urban legends have placed fear in the hearts of parents, but none of it is true.
Children are not abducted while trick-or-treating, and disappearances and violence against children do not increase on Halloween, despite parental fears.
Also, no child has been killed or injured by a stranger-tampered Halloween treat, according to extensive research. The idea of random attacks on trick-or-treaters is a myth. Isolated incidents of tampering have occurred, but all were harmless pranks or perpetrated by a child’s own family members.
The most famous case, the 1974 death of Timothy O’Bryan, involved his father lacing candy with cyanide to collect on his son’s life insurance policy.
Charlie doesn’t need to worry about that.
We don’t have a life insurance policy on him.
