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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2354 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 11, 2024

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Trunk or treat with the kids, boo at the zoo, visit the Day of the Dead memorials around Old Town Plaza. They say they put up 20,000 marigolds, it looks lovely. Apparently daughter’s going on a field trip where an Orchestra from Mexico will perform and talk about the music from Coco.

No Trick or Treat? Just trunk?

Possibly, but my neighborhood is kind of weird, everyone’s house is way behind their fence, so we would have to drive. There is a pretty good neighborhood haunted house only on Halloween, though.

It’s like tailgating, but for parents.

I've been pretty underwhelmed on the fun aspect of trunk or treat so far. Kids only having to walk 200 feet for 20,000 calories of corn syrup seems like the societal own-goal of the century.

Sometimes I worry I romanticized my childhood too much, but the experience of going door to door with your friends and collapsing, exhausted, to trade candy on the living room floor after such a long journey was consistently awesome. I don't see how this can really compete.

We were Evangelical homeschoolers when I was Trick-or-Treating age, and also didn't have any neighborhood friends, so I guess I don't have any trick or treat golden age to look back on.

My impression is that there's an ideal age range for real trick or treating, and that my kids (5, 2, and not eating solids yet) are a bit young still. I saw some kids doing it last year, I think three total, so it would be a bit of an adventure, people don't signal if they're giving treats or not. I haven't had a single kid try at my house in four years.

I 100% agree on your 2 year old, and I would be a long-range helicopter with the 5 year old. But I had my 3 year old do a turn of the cul-de-sac at least before he said he was too tired to continue. Por que no los dos?

There's a bit of a supply and demand spiral going on, too. People in great neighborhoods don't get enough kids (I got maybe 7 last year?) so don't bother answering the door or handing stuff out. Others don't understand the signal that if your light is on, it means you're giving out candy, which makes kids have to walk a ton to get to a couple doors etc....

If they are not giving treats, aren't you supposed to be a little juvenile delinquent and play a trick on them?

Theoretically, but I have not encountered that outside of movies

People criticize me for my negative view of cars but the fact that the majority of the middle class in the wealthiest country on earth never walk anywhere that isn’t from [parking lot] to [immediately adjacent building] is very unfortunate.

I'm a bit of a fast food addict, and watching people choose to get into a 30 (!) car deep drive thru line instead of hopping into a parking spot is insane. Even the journey from a parking lot is too much for the majority of people.

I wouldn't necessarily read too much into it. If I were going to make a culture war statement, it would be about saftyism, rather than willingness to walk, even with the two year old (though it's really annoying to walk with a tired two year old). The kids went on a two mile hike with us to find an ancient cliff ruin that we heard about from a stranger in a bar the other day. They can probably go trick or treating when they're old enough to take initiative about it.

Yeah, I had a similar experience. Shit was magical. I don’t know any current-year kids who don’t like it, either.

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