I am sad this Halloween. This is the first year that I can remember when we did not have one single trick or treater. Not one! I remember years past almost running out of candy when we had like five of those giant Costco bags. Kid after kid - continuous waves coming to our door. We had lights all over the trees, decorations everywhere, a dozen carved pumpkins, spooky music played through the boom boxes we hauled downstairs and put int he windows.
And this year - not a single kid.
I'm thinking that some of this is that our neighborhood is getting older. Younger people - the kind that have kids - just cannot afford to buy a house any more, so they're just not around us. It is a bit devastating to me thinking about this. I felt genuine sadness for our giant fanged rat sitting there on the front porch, arms outstretched in menace, and not a single person coming to visit him. And it's not even a real living rat. But I'm still sad for it. The pumpkins sat there with their little tea candles flickering in the undisturbed darkness.
I nibbled a few of the excess Twix and Reeces Cups we now have sitting around, and they just don't taste good to me anymore. And the Hershey's bars? - the ones that are about 3/4" by 1/2" "fun sized" now - they were tasteless.