Halloween. How great is that? At the risk of sounding party pooper paranoid, this is the night that I let total strangers—many of them full grown teens disgorged from non-local mini-vans—sashay up to my doorstep wearing disguises. Where I use both hands to fork over a type of food that I normally parcel out to my daughter like Morphine to a heroin addict. Where I provide every Tom, Dick and Dracula with an inside view of my house. The occasion where masked people feel free to jump out at me in a faux attack when I’m walking down the street, at night, with my nine-year-old. Packing heat (me not her). The same night when, last year, I scared a teen so badly with my clown mask and maniacal laugh that she ran down the middle of the street for four blocks (straight through a stop sign), then brought her friends back to hurl curses and beer bottles at my house. Now get off my lawn!

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44 COMMENTS

  1. “The same night when, last year, I scared a teen so badly with my clown mask and maniacal laugh that she ran down the middle of the street for four blocks (straight through a stop sign), then brought her friends back to hurl curses and beer bottles at my house.”

    If they had done this to me I would’ve hurled back more beer bottles than they could handle 🙂

  2. I dispense candy from my 2nd-floor balcony via a 12-foot PVC pipe. No answering the door, no free looks inside my house.

    This probably doesn’t work unless you have a 2nd-floor balcony on the front side of your house.

      • It’s a great neighborhood; I just like handing out the candy a little differently. Most of our trick-or-treaters are under 10 years old and the older ones are costumed and polite. Everybody likes the Magic Candy Dispensor!

        • That would be pretty fun, actually, both giving and getting.

          I bet it’d be even more fun if you dressed up as a greenish guy wearing gloves with a hole in one finger and piped the candy through a snergelly hose.

  3. I hate halloween too and am grateful that my neighborhood has no sidewalks or street lights and no one has come to the door in the dozen years we’ve lived here, so I content myself with a 1911 and no longer spend the night with a shotgun in my lap.

    • The bar code directly above fhe safe/fire selector? That’s the serial number plate. Bad idea to remove that.

  5. @michaelb. Nah that’s what the 2 year old brownies that great Aunt Sarah made are for.

    @chris dumm. I just climb up on the roof and fling candy at them as they get out of the car!!! Not really. Live so far back in the woods the neighbors don’t even venture up to the house.

  6. Robert, if you feel left out this year, I can always round up some friends to come hurl beer bottles at your house and curse. Unless, of course, you invited us in for scotch and cigars. Doesn’t even have to be good scotch. . .

    • Let’s gather up jwm, get some Eddie Cochran playing on the radio, and TP old man Farago’s pad for being such a wet rag! On the way there we’ll pick up Nick and he can explain why plastic ain’t his bag.

      That’ll show him for rustling our jimmies by posting several mikeyb0290290 commentaries. 😀

      • You also need to gather up racer88 and Aharon for security, and throw on Ozzie’s Crazy Train when you pull up to RF’s digs!!!
        And then you can tie rf and nick back to back, call MikeyBnumbers, put him on speakerphone and tape the phone to the side of nicks head while mikeyb explains all of his policies and beliefs on gun control!!! Heck of a trick, no real treat.

      • I’ll provide the TP. Not because RF is such a wet rag, but because those beer bottle throwing teens didn’t get the hillbilly remedy, a load of rock salt in the ass.

        • AR, I’ve actually had that possum loose in the house bit. Nothing but fun, especially when your wife is the first to spot him.

        • Heck I would bring the scotch! Aharon is closer to me anyways I think!
          If we are skilled drivers, I am sure we can put together a real good BBQ by the time we get to RF;s place!
          Just no skunk please….

  7. I’m delivering pizzas tonight. I just got tipped in fun size candy bars (do I have to report that with the rest of my tips?). I’m wondering how crazy it’ll get once the sun goes down.

  12. I live in the bay area and there’s a million giants fans in the city loosing their minds as we type. This is likely to be a wild halloween around here.

  13. Thankfully, I live in nice neighborhood. Between packing heat, trustworthy neighbors, and watchdogs, I’m not terribly concerned about 6 year old girls in princess costumes.
    I’m paranoid, but I’m not THAT paranoid.

    • Have you ever seen what a pack of 6 year old girls jacked up on sugar can do?

      The horror… the horror.

      • But what about the PARENTS! Think of the PARENTS!!!
        I am sitting here answering the door every 12 seconds… Eventually the goods will run dry and I can go watch TV or something uninterrupted.

  14. Jeez. I live within the city of Richmond, in an old neighborhood on the Northside, and the kids tonight have been, without exception, polite, well-mannered, appropriately-costumed, and non-greedy. As they have been for the last 13 years. They appear to have come from every point in the socio-economic spectrum, though of course one never knows.

    Yes, I know where my .38 is.

    But, sometimes, when you expect good kids, you get good kids.

    • Agree. I went out with my kids (5 & 8 yo) and both of my gals were polite and sensible and treated likewise. Mind you, Papa was on the street watching their 6 o’clock.

      When we got home, the candy was appropriately looked over, the executive escort fee was paid and the kids will now have the candy doled out in a responsible and frugal manner.

      I see Trick-or-treating like a pre-teen debate club. You bring your best resources to the table (manners and good costume) in order to win your opponents (parents with candy) to your side of the argument (“please give me your candy.”)

      This year my 8yo went as Medusa. Did any of the kids at school identify her costume? No way- none of them are familiar with mythology in 3rd grade. However, I pointed out that her target audience (parents at home giving out candy) will know exactly whom she was portraying and will think it adorable. This was played out time and again when parents immediately identified her character against that of a Disney character that my 5yo went as (the 5yo could have cared less).

      Lighten up RF. Darken the rest of the house to limit info, be a good judge of character/costume and reward appropriately and see it as a simple way to strap on 2 single actions as part of a cowboy outfit. Remember, it’s about the only day of the year when open carry is actually encouraged…

  15. RF,

    You could place a large screen TV in your front window, position outside speakers, and then play on repeat “Innocents Betrayed”. A door sign can loudly state that you do not observe Halloween because of the pagan origins and underneath the sign you can post TTAG web address.

  16. Some years back when I still owned a house I really looked forward to Halloween night and all the kids coming around. The thought never occurred to me that they’d be scoping out my house. Besides, they wouldn’t see anything different from any other night walking down our street.

    The house, my wife, my kids and that life are all gone. There’s no problems with trick-or-treaters in my apartment complex. There aren’t any.

    Everything’s relative I guess.

    • I remember this happening… terrible tragedy. And probably one of the number reasons everybody in Japan thinks American gun owners are paranoid and trigger happy.

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