{"id":575,"date":"2010-10-31T18:56:11","date_gmt":"2010-10-31T23:56:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/?p=575"},"modified":"2010-10-31T18:56:37","modified_gmt":"2010-10-31T23:56:37","slug":"trick-or-treat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/2010\/10\/31\/trick-or-treat","title":{"rendered":"Trick or Treat!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Now for a pumpkin-carving, spooky edition of&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><b><font size=3>Here&#8217;s to You!!!<\/font><\/p>\n<p>So I raise my glass (or perhaps a Reese&#8217;s Cup!) and say, &#8220;Here&#8217;s to you, trick-or-treating!&#8221;<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Happy Halloween!<\/p>\n<p>As I write this, I&#8217;m sitting at my front door with my laptop, periodically getting up to pass out candy to lots of adorable neighborhood children in adorable costumes! Yay!<\/p>\n<p>I have to say, I&#8217;m happy that the rise in helicopter parenting and stranger danger hasn&#8217;t totally demolished trick-or-treating, although those have certainly taken some massive blows to it, varying depending on location. When I was living at my grandmother&#8217;s house a few years ago, there weren&#8217;t very many kids around on Halloween, which was disappointing. But now that I&#8217;m in a different neighborhood, there are a bunch!<\/p>\n<p>Yet I get people I know getting apathetic about it, who&#8230; ugh&#8230; don&#8217;t give out any candy and just leave the lights off that night. See, I could never do that. How could I not participate in trick-or-treating? I remember trick-or-treating myself, occasionally having to pass by the darkened doorsteps of my boring neighbors who seemed to be going &#8220;bah humbug!&#8221; to the whole thing. Makes no sense.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s great! Sitting all evening with a bowl of candy I&#8217;m totally taking from now and then. The kids come up, dressed up in costumes they put some amount of effort in, all smiles, and I give them some candy and they smile even bigger and say &#8220;thanks!&#8221; Awww! \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n<p>I sometimes wonder if this contributes to the objectification of children. I guess, the idea does seem to be &#8220;aww, you&#8217;re so cute! here&#8217;s a treat!&#8221; But I suppose that&#8217;s more a side thing, while there is good in the social aspect of visiting neighbors under happy terms, walking around the neighborhood on a lovely autumn evening (seriously, in my entire life, I think it has rained on Halloween only once or twice!). And it is an evening when, despite the occasional presence of parents to make sure Pedobear doesn&#8217;t attack, the kids themselves truly run the show. Therefore, we must keep up trick-or-treating, not grow apathetic, and keep Halloween and all the good clean fun it carries with it alive!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/10\/31\/opinion\/31stine.html?_r=3&#038;ref=opinion\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"post\">And to not ruin it by trying to make it more adult.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Although, for your information, absolutely none of the little girls I&#8217;ve seen out tonight, or on any Halloween, despite what the news says, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/2007\/11\/01\/costumes\" class=\"post\">have been dressed like prostitutes!<\/a> \ud83d\ude44<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/smilies\/happyhalloween2.gif\" title=\"Happy Halloween!\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Now for a pumpkin-carving, spooky edition of&#8230; Here&#8217;s to You!!! So I raise my glass (or perhaps a Reese&#8217;s Cup!) and say, &#8220;Here&#8217;s to you, trick-or-treating!&#8221; Happy Halloween! As I write this, I&#8217;m sitting at my front door with my laptop, periodically getting up to pass out candy to lots of adorable neighborhood children in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/2010\/10\/31\/trick-or-treat\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Trick or Treat!&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-heres-to-you"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=575"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":577,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/575\/revisions\/577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}