One of the best things about having a kid is you get to do comparison shopping between their childhood and yours. When you’re a child, you don’t know anything else. This is life as you know it. As an adult, seeing your kid grow up is like watching a remake of a TV series you used to love, just with different actors. “Oh, I remember this episode. This is where the kid finds out ‘summer-time’ moves at twice the speed of ‘school-time.’ Suck it up, junior. It only gets worse from here.”
Having “been there, done that” it’s easy to fall into the “back in my day” trap. But to me, nothing makes you seem older than telling another generation how much harder you had it than them. Or how much better you were than them. If you really want to alienate yourself though, just start the routine where you tell them how much more morally superior you were to them - and how they’re taking the country to hell-in-a-hand basket (whatever that is). Young people just love that.
Being a parent does give you the chance to relive some experiences without all the annoyance of responsibility. Like, I can go with my daughter to the first day of school and get swept up in the excitement, but then I just leave. I don’t have to eat in the cafeteria. I don’t have to take any tests. I don’t even have to “keep my hands to myself.” Though I have found there are still those who don’t appreciate that as much as I do.
We also possess the invaluable commodity of experience. I have a whole childhood of Halloween life lessons that I can pass on to my daughter. Do you know what an advantage that is? She can take my BS in Halloween and turn it into a Masters degree in two years. And, while a few of the rules have changed (no homemade treats, pre-packaged candies only, neighborhood upgrading is acceptable, etc) there’s still no substitute for speed and talent.
Because I’ve literally “been around the block” a few times, I know what houses to avoid, what costumes are cute in concept but will actually slow you down and when the peak hours are before tic-tacs and loose change are given out. You don’t get that information your first year.
I can say that while I don’t know who the Halloween Commissioner is, I have been in favor of most of their rule changes. As a kid I was a little annoyed when we went to “pre-packaged goods only.” But now I think it’s brilliant. Before, we’d have to give up space in our treat bags to popcorn balls or someone trying to handout fruit or God forbid, religious tracts. Now, it’s clear. Just buy candy and put it in the bag. It’s a simple transaction. Nobody gets hurt past a sugar high and a few weak-kneed teeth. They’re just baby teeth anyway. They’ll be back.
The other rule we finally got right was the “date rule”. Halloween is October 31. It’s October 31 if it falls on a Monday or a Wednesday or any other school day. We can’t just start moving holidays around to make it more convenient. It’s October 31 because that’s when the bible says it is. And if it was good enough for Jesus, well it’s good enough for me.
In many ways, Halloween today is a gentler, kinder holiday. Sure some kids still show up to the door in gore-drenched costumes, but mostly it’s super heroes and princesses. “Back in my day” we routinely showed up as Dracula, Frankenstein or anything else with fake blood you couldn’t scrub off for three days. Of course, if you forgot Halloween was coming, there was always the ubiquitous “Hobo” as your fall back costume.
I think we may have actually been more violent in general in my childhood. Just look at our cartoons. The entire content of a Looney Tunes episode was one character chasing another character to either eat them, shoot them or wait for an anvil to fall on their head. My wife and I get to watch A LOT of cartoons with a four year old in the house. Those characters are too busy recycling, discovering sustainable habitats, and articulating their feelings to paint railroad tunnels on the sides of mountains.
There’s also been an evolution in costumes that started in my generation but has been perfected in recent years. When I started trick or treating, we used whatever we could find in the house to make up our costumes. But nobody made money on that tradition. Enter store-bought costumes with your favorite TV heroes. ChaChing! My first (and only) store-bought costume was Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man. It was essentially a hospital gown made of paper thin visqueen and a pre-pressed plastic mask. You could smell the Taiwanese craftsmanship. It gave you a chemical high - which when coupled with sugar, could be near catastrophic. We loved it.
Now the costumes look like Hollywood backstage knockoffs. We must have been visited by 25 different varieties of “Elsa” princesses last year. I’m trying to let it go, but each one looked like they could be in the closing parade at Disney World. Summer blockbusters often signal must have October costumes. Watch out, Dory. And again we say “ChaChing”.
For her part, my daughter has been rather deliberate in her costume choices thus far: a pink poodle, Sally from Peanuts, a princess-fairy-butterfly. The costume leading the race for this year’s Halloween: a foot. Yep. It’s not my job to intervene at this point. It’s my role to offer council and subtle suggestions. And I do know this from my BS in Halloween, no matter what a four year old little girl works up for a costume, it all pays the same…bags full of candy. ChaChing!
