Quality over Quantity: Trick or Treating in the Country

For country kids, trick or treating isn’t a matter of getting dressed up, walking out your door, and traveling up and down sidewalks in a quest to hit up as many houses as possible for candy, chocolate, and the occasional toothbrush from the well-meaning dentist down the street.  No, for country kids like us trick or treating was a matter of piling into the minivan after your parents have drawn straws to see who would drive you north and who would drive you south and driving from house to house, where your parents would come to the door with you and then discuss their crop yields for ten minutes or so.

Yes, strange as it sounds, for kids in the country trick or treating is not an environmentally friendly activity, and definitely doesn’t offer kids the chance to run around and burn off those candy calories before/while consuming them (as if kids care about that anyway!).  Were we to walk, we could probably visit a dozen houses or so within an hour.

Our friends in the city would brag about how they ran from house to house to get as much candy as possible.

We got to brag about how many FULL SIZE CHOCOLATE BARS! we got.  And how none of the houses we visited gave us a single Werther’s candy as a treat.

In the country, it’s quality over quantity.  If the house you visit is giving away mini chocolate bars you get a handful of ‘em, because it is more than likely that the house will get only a handful of trick or treaters.  Fewer visitors = more candy.  It’s a delicious equation.

I trick or treated until I was 17. Yes, 17. And no, I’m not short, and most of the houses we visited knew my age quite well.  Heck, our grandmother lives next door.  How did I work this?  Easy.  I could drive!  Mom and Dad could stay home!  I wrapped myself in tin foil, stuck a ski helmet on my head, and called myself an astronaut.  Mmmmm…space candy…

We never bought our costumes.  Why bother when you can raid your grandparent’s closets for your mom’s old clothes, use facepaint, colour your hair, stick clotheshangers in your hair, and sew cute little skirts out of vintage bridesmaids dresses?

Here we are, getting ready to trick or treat. Pippi Longstocking (Micaela), a hippy (Kate), a vampire (Lauren), a baby (Leah), and Sailor Moon (Erica).

I am Sailor Moon, the champion of justice. In the name of the moon, I will right wrong and triumph over evil… and that means you!

OH MY LORD I WAS A DORK. But we all knew this already…