If you have ever lived in a city where I have resided, and your kiddies have gone trick-or-treating, perhaps we've met over a bucket of Kit Kats.
Yup, I'm the Elvira wannabe who shows up at the door in full-tilt Halloween regalia, a character I like to think of as the black-fishnetted love child of Morticia Addams and Billy Bob Thornton.
I'm the green one, or the one with plastic scars bulging from my face, the bloody-lipped wonder who once made a wee one cry, "Are those scars real? Take them OFFFFFFFF!"
And if your Smartie-snarfers came home with more and better candy than you expected, OK, that was me, too: I don't want to be thought of as the neighborhood bad-candy lady. My husband, who thinks generic candy lines the streets of hell, taught me that it's better to err on the side of sick as a dog and fill those sacks, pillowcases and little hands with premium goodies.
For several years, especially just after the Tylenol-tainting incident of the early 1980s and the anthrax scare of the early '00s, the thought of letting their kids paw through candy given by strangers scared some parents. I hate nuts who start that kind of crap, by the way.
But contrary to the notion that everything was perfectly perfect in the 1950s -- an era that spawned communist witch-hunts and Sen. Joe McCarthy and what's scarier than THAT -- and the 1960s, we had candy-tampering tales when I was a kid, too.
I'd bring home an apple and my mother, armed with the ability to peer straight through people and non-lead-based objects, would launch into action. She would cut the apple into 4,000 or so small pieces. Then, she'd hand the bowl of apple goo to my dad, who ate things like hog brains anyway, and let him have at it. I wasn't scared of anything or anybody after watching my father eat hog brains.
OK, anybody except Mr. George.
In my head, the Incredibly Scary Mr. George has become this hovering, smoky presence, sort of like the big, giant noggin of Oz in "The Wizard of Oz."
Remember the scene where Dorothy and the gang ran running from Oz's castle because Big Smoky Oz Head yelled at them? I spent a good part of my childhood running down Stone Avenue, away from Mr. George, who hated children, even those dressed as princesses, frogs, pirates or ghosts.
Mr. George, who lived next door to us, was the type who would grab a kickball that landed in his yard, hoist it over his head and shout something that sounded like "MuHAHAHAHAHA!" as he ran into the house and, we think, put the ball in a closet full of busted sports gear and mutilated Christmas elves.
On Halloween, I would sneak across the driveway to Mr. George's house and peek in the window, to see if he was killing his wife or letting the air out of our balls or involved in some other sick and wrong ritual.
If things appeared normal, I'd get my little brother, Mike, by the hand and lead him up to the front door, where Ma, Mr. George's wife, would give us candy and tell us how cute we were. Behind her, Mr. George stared us down from his chair, plotting how to knock us off our bikes and defile our toys.
I had to be brave for Mike, but to this day, every Oct. 31, I check over my shoulder periodically to make sure Mr. George's head isn't perched in the chair behind me, eyeing my stuff.
Halloween, it turns out, has lessons for us all.
Nothing is much more gross than watching a man eating food that once was in a hog's head.
Nothing with a raisin in it should be handed out as candy, because raisins are, and I can't stress this enough, NOT CANDY.
And for most kids, at least those with a healthy attitude and a great costume, a little dose of Halloween is not only not harmful, it offers a chance to dream. To dress up, chow down and, once in a while, run down the sidewalk, screaming and/or throwing up, past fairy princesses and Cookie Monsters and Tin Men and gangsters.
Or at least a scarry-cheeked Elvira, with the best candy on the block and a great ghost story about an old man who died, his wispy head missing, in a house full of basketballs and screaming elves.
MuHAHAHAHAHA. MuHA!
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