Trick or treat

Tim Dunlop has been enjoying his first Halloween season, as has his six-year-old son Noah, who's quite excited about trick-or-treating. Dunlop and his family live in the DC area, which led to this observation:

You want to know another reason the region is sighing with relief that the snipers have been caught - Halloween is it. No-one I know was particularly thrilled at the prospect of their kids wandering around in the dark with those two murderers still out there.

You've all heard the legends about poisoned candy and razor blades in apples, almost all of which are pure bunk. Unfortunately, they still tend to ruin an otherwise perfect holiday for kids. Tiffany tells me that trick-or-treating essentially stopped in Houston for several years after Ronald Clark O'Bryan murdered his son by spiking some of his Halloween loot with cynanide in 1974. Didn't matter that it was one sick bastard who deliberately targeted his son in order to collect life insurance money, the fact that it happened was enough to scare people into keeping their kids at home on Halloween.

So I'm glad to see that people are looking forward to Halloween, as they should be. Our neighborhood makes a big deal out of it every year - the folks across the street have more decorations up than some houses have for Christmas. We get so inundated with trick-or-treaters that I always feel compelled to give a heads-up to new arrivals. It's pure chaos, and it's a lot of fun.

Posted by Charles Kuffner on October 30, 2002 to Society and cultcha | TrackBack