Dear big bad world, you can’t have this Halloween!
School replaces Halloween parade with ‘Black and Orange Day’
Massachusetts parents express outrage after principal says annual holiday event was not all-inclusive.
It was 1982. That is the first Halloween I remember the hum of petrified parents. It was the first time we didn’t get to go trick or treating, no not even one street over. Instead, we had a makeshift party at a neighbor’s house. The TV news turned on low warned of tainted Tylenol.
The next year was the first time we took our candy to the police station to be X-rayed to check for needles and razor blades. We heard the adults whisper: “What is the world coming to?”
We didn’t know, but I thought as police checked out my candy: “Easy with that full-size Snickers you’re manhandling!”
As an adult with children ranging in age from 3 to 22, I have seen just about everything in the ways of Halloween. From the politically incorrect to the religiously correct to the “yeah, just give us some freaking candy,” everyone has an opinion.
And every year there is some new rule or renegade rant about all the souls that have come and gone, and may or may not stop by for some creepy punch served over dry ice. Dry ice, by the way, is very dangerous when handled with bare hands.
As I watched volunteers wander into the haunted house at my daughter’s school, I noted that 35 years ago those costumes would have sent me to counseling. My husband whimpered and covered the eyes of our 5-year-old as a cheerleader with high-def cosmetics entered, carrying what was supposed to be her own head under one arm.
Everything is more terrifying now, in make-believe and in real life.
Read the rest at: We want Halloween back
