If you’re a parent, you’re hyper-aware that Halloween isn’t just one day out of the year. No. We WISH it was, but no. Halloween isn’t just a tutu, a mask, or a simple costume, no. It’s practically its own goddamn season.
Halloween begins at least 4 weeks before October 31st. If you’re really festive, maybe a few months prior. Moms everywhere ask, “sweetie, what do you want to be for Halloween this year?” It can take anywhere from 2 minutes from the time you asked the question, to 2 minutes before it’s time to go trick-or-treating for children to make a solid decision.
Sometimes mothers begin making costumes (yes MAKING them) only to have their sweet offspring change their ever loving mind just as the last stitch is sewn in the seam. It’s a defeating feeling, but one mothers aren’t foreign to.
Sometimes children claim to have “told you a long time ago” what they want to be but we know that never happened, but we have to pretend we have it under control. And it becomes a shit show resembling the game show, “Supermarket Sweep” but in real life (I’m dating myself), except at Halloween Express, and Party City, and Target, and Walmart, and K-Mart, resulting in Amazon PRIME (RUSH THE FUCKING COSTUME HERE RIGHT FUCKING NOW, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD) shipping.
Don’t even get me started on the candy situation. It shows up in Target the same day the Pumpkin Spice Latte is brought back to Starbucks, and moms everything begin spending 4 days a week in Target ranging anywhere from 9am to 2:33pm (because it takes exactly 12 minutes to get from the Target parking lot to the kids’ school pick up lot). It’s bad on the wallet, husbands everywhere are pissed that we needed more “deodorant, or make-up wipes again,” which is actually code for “I’m going to Target to buy whatever the fuck I want because I birthed kids.” So we end up leaving Target with 2 more bags of Halloween candy, a throw pillow, a new coffee mug (because you promised you’d try to start kicking your Starbucks addiction and make coffee at home – HA yea right!), and one last Starbucks coffee.
The candy gets eaten in less than a week because it’s that time of month for mom, or the kids act like they didn’t know it was for Halloween, or mom acts like she didn’t know it was for Halloween, or it’s Wednesday. We don’t need to throw blame around, the fact of the matter is, we WILL go through at least 6 more bags of candy before we actually buy the candy that will be given out on Halloween night. That’s the way it’s always been, and it’s the way it’s always gonna be.
The school Fall Festivals are the nail in the coffin for me. By the time I’m done spending my WHOLE weekend running around to all the different schools, playing all the different games, eating shit food, collecting plastic spider rings and rubber bats, and spending all my fortunes on DONATING to whatever fucking school fundraiser it is this month, I’m ready to kiss Halloween’s ass GOODBYE.
But no.
We still have to have costume day at school. So we do a dress rehearsal if you will. Then our children decide that they don’t want to wear that costume on Halloween night after all because the velcro on the back is too itchy. So we scour the land for another costume and all we can find is a Power Ranger costume that is 5 times too big, and $40 too much from the local Halloween Shack. Mom becomes desperate, buys it and cuts it up in order to make it fit. Kid smiles. yay.
Is it over yet?
Nope.
Halloween night arrives. Parents everywhere see the light at the end of the tunnel as the whiny, sugar induced goblins begin to crash somewhere around block 3 from the house. As parents carry their overloaded chocolate consumers for blocks while lugging around the 50 pound pumpkin bucket full of sugar, sleep feels so close…
But once you hit the front porch, the kids fall out of their costumes and into the candy bucket. Or better yet, some just sleep in their costumes as they hug their bucket, fearful that the candy may disappear over night like last year (and parents deny they had anything to do with it).
And for the next 10 days our children are demanding to get into their costumes again and again and again. They’re demanding to eat dessert after every meal, for every snack, or in substitution for every meal. It’s a fucking nightmare. And this is why parents have no choice but to eat the candy while the kids are in bed. It’s called sacrifice.
Halloween is not just one day out of the year, no. Halloween is the beginning of the holiday season that sends every parent into bankruptcy, panic and insanity. But fortunately, there’s chocolate all season long.
Until next year, Halloween. I thank you for the chocolate left behind and the pictures I’ll blackmail my kids with in the near future.
PEACE!
Appetite for Honesty 