What If They Held a Halloween and Nobody Came?

It’s November 1, and I’m feeling a little down today, just a little off. It’s not a huge thing, and I’m not like, depressed, or anything, but I just feel like a person who missed a party he wasn’t planning to go to anyway, but still felt sorry he missed it.

Yesterday was Halloween, and I bought a bunch of candy for the little freeloaders who normally swarm on such an occasion. The candy is untouched. No one showed. No spaced out babies dolled up with wings or a kitty suit; no avaricious 6 year olds in home-made dragon outfits; no pop-culturally relevant Manafort impersonators in jailbird stripes; not even a single over-the-age, trick-or-treating teen who just wants the candy and has made only the barest attempt to impersonate a costume-wearer – maybe a drawn-on mustache or a scarf over the head.

I miss all those moochers. In some ways, I also feel a bit responsible – as though I accidentally put out a negative stay-away vibe that blocked our house from the internal sensors that kids (and their parents) use to direct them to the most generous candy-distro houses. Of course, the real reason is that I live in a 50 plus community. Kids don’t live here! Duh! But outsiders could still come in though, right?

So what do you do with a bunch of candy that you don’t want. Or, rather, that you do want, but no really you don’t. I took it back to the market.

That made me feel lousy all over again. Here was this store that had put on a massive display of candy, even discounting some of it, for the big national holiday that is Halloween. And here was this consumer, me, returning it a day late after its value had plummeted. I had violated the store’s trust, is what it felt like. Took their candy out on loan for the possibility of a rapacious attack by young costumed candi-vores. Then brought it back for a full refund.

The young woman at the service desk did not seem at all hostile at my taking advantage of the store’s liberal return policy. “No one came,” I said sheepishly as I dumped my bags of unopened “snack size” munchables on the counter.

“No one came to my house either,” she said, and she told me she lives across the street from a school. I idly wondered if it was possible trick or treating didn’t take place this year? But of course it did. It was everywhere.

I got a text from my friend Larry in Indianapolis with a picture of his front yard all gussied up, awaiting the rampaging hordes. I got pictures of my grandchildren out on the town. My grandson Sam, who is ten, started out as Trump, and ended up as a New Jersey Devil (get it?). My granddaughter Sarah, 13, was a shadow hunter based on a book series.

So, the party was held everywhere else but here it seems. Around here, it was just another day.