Trick or Treating in South Chase

(writing this as of Monday evening, November 1st...)

I'll stand by this statement until the day I die: Floridians can't celebrate Halloween for shit.


When I was a young trick or treater, growing up in small-town, mid-Michigan, it was a rare thing to see a house not participating in the Halloween festivities. You'd see a house without lights on and not answering their door for trick or treaters, and you'd think to yourself, "What the hell are those folks' problem?"


Down here, at least where we live, at least four out of five houses were like that. Seriously.


I don't know what folks' excuses were for this most heinous of transgressions - it definitely wasn't the weather.


We used to get frostbite running about Clare, MI., forgoing the much-needed layers of sweatshirts and sweatpants underneath our costumes as they'd only make us look 'stupid' (as pirates do not wear sweatshirts). Here in central Florida, it was a mild 68 degrees or so... which meant you could walk around in shorts and be perfectly fine.


This also means that someone could arguably stand in their doorway with a bowl of candy, in their shorts, and be perfectly fine. Alas, residents in South Chase evidently have no soul.



Alas, that candy wasn't about to be delivered to our front door, so we had to venture out into the perfectly acceptable night weather, skip over those soulless houses, and collect it ourselves. We took our kids out alongside a coworker of mine, his wife, and their four kids, so we definitely resembled the Fellowship of the Ring as we trudged along the sidewalk, all ten of us adorning costumes and desperately seeking out Halloween participants.


Things started off slow, sure enough, but fortunately they picked up before the kids got too tired to carry on. The worst part of the evening was knowing that I had to get up at 5am the next day - I can't even begin to describe how much it sucked having to do trick or treating on a frickin' Sunday (working that next day was not fun).


But, in the end, Alayna had a blast, so it was well worth it.


...except now the adults are binging on Halloween candy, and my teeth couldn't be more pissed at me.

- Brian