Halloween Memoirs

I'm so so so so soooooooooooooooooooooo very bad. I'm just a baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad girl.

It's been forever since I've posted here. I work waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay toooooooooo muuuuuuuuch! I have a day job and two other jobs, plus kids, a hubby, baseball mom...

I've slowed down this week due to a virus.

Anyway, onto more of the fun stuff.

October is a FUN month! Yeah! I mean really really really FUN! When we get the shivers and shooks and spooked out of our gourds and we LOVE it!

What are some of YOUR favorite Halloween memories?

I'm from the outskirts of Cincinnati where there's always a chill in the air (and occasionally snow on the ground) and beautiful changing leaves every Halloween. I grew up with the same kids who intermarried (yeah, one of the neighborhood punks had the nerve to marry my cousin! The worst one, the one that always called me "Boo Boo" as in my best friend was "Yogi Bear" and me as the little sidekick (or is that "hero support" nowadays?) got stuck with "Boo Boo") - and then we called him "Cindy") and most of those "kids - who are now in their 40's and 50's ) still live on that LONG road). I'm one of the few who moved away - blame dh, as I would have stayed there forever and ever and would run back now if given half the chance.

Anyway, I loved trick or treating door to door when the moon hung high in the sky, the toilet paper ghosts swayed in the brisk fall breeze, and the punky boys jumped out at us from the shadows to scare us to death. I loved weaving in and out of the spooky woods that framed our neighborhood. I loved being with my extended family, Cindy included - if anyone tells him, I will emphatically deny it and hunt you down!

It wasn't about the candy, although I wasn't about to give that back or not take it. It was the sheer fun, the wildness, the hint of evil which comparative to nowadays was so squeaky clean and wholesome.

The church apple-bobbing was okay and I think better in retrospect than at the time. I miss that, too. That old dilapidated house we held the parties in probably was really haunted, and truly about to tumble down on us. It's long gone now, except in my memory. That was at the end of our road. Those poor homeless ghosts probably moved into our woods and hang out there now.

Halloween sure seems tamer and less fun in South Florida than in Cincinnati. Maybe because I'm not the kid going door to door. Or perhaps at my church we have "Trunk or Treat" and go trunk to trunk in a well lit parking lot without any woods. Even when I take the kids door to door, there are no dark and spooky woods, and being Florida, no chill breezes, no colorful leaves, none of that spooktacular stuff Halloween is supposed to be made of.

Someone please get me a time machine and transport me back to those days, or almost as good, just whisk me back to Cincinnati, to the best place to Trick or Treat in the world.