Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

Beggar’s night (AKA Trick-or-Treat) is tomorrow night in my city. Theoretically, children will travel from house to house wearing costumes of characters from TV and video games that I don’t recognize, and in return, I’ll give them some portion of the $27 this household has spent on candy for this specific event. See, we don’t give out that lame candy. No generic stuff, no candy corn, no Jolly Ranchers, no wax paper wrapped around a waxy lump, no pennies, no kids meal gift certificates… Real candy, the good stuff, the stuff you’d pick out for yourself. Because, frankly, we probably did end up picking it our for ourselves.

This will be our fourth Halloween in this house and turnout has been very uneven. Last year we had maybe 20 kids. When I was young, Trick-or-Treat was a giant deal. I remember waiting in line at front doors for candy, sometimes moving along if I found out a particular house wasn’t giving away anything good. The streets were full of kids. Not so anymore. A certain paranoia and an over-protectivenes of our children has severely curtailed Trick-or-Treating. Every child is a precious flower, you see, and anything that might remotely expose them to any kind of quasi-negative experience should be avoided at all costs. I truly wonder how many in this neighborhood will instruct their kids not to go to the gay peoples’ house tomorrow night. You know those gays… they’re all perverts who can’t wait to get their hands on your precious flowers.

Which reminds me that in Ohio, if you’re a registered sex offender, the state requires you to turn out your lights for Trick-or-Treat and post a state provided sign on your door stating that candy is not being given out at this residence. Can anyone cite for me a recorded instance where a known sex offender has pulled a costumed kid into their house for sexual abuse? Parents, maybe you should put a good dollop of water-soluable lube on your kids before you send them out tomorrow, just in case. And, of course, I must raise the question I always raise of these sex offenders: If they’re so dangerous that they shouldn’t be allowed to have contact with children during Trick-or-Treat, why are they not in jail? I have not received a satisfactory response to this inquiry as yet.

Speaking of which, what a great costume! I could dress as a sex offender this year! Hm, well, maybe not. I’m not a parent, a step-parent, a grandparent or an uncle. I’m not a scout leader or a clergyman. I’m not a close friend of a family with children. Considering that those kinds of societal misfits are most likely to abuse children, as a complete stranger I wouldn’t be very convincing.

I do have another idea for Halloween fun, however. I’m going over to the Kroger tomorrow after work and purchasing a bag of apples and a box of razor blades. I want to see if the police tackle me as I walk out the door, in the name of the precious children! Maybe I could hand each kid an apple and a razor blade as they come to my door tomorrow night and apologize because I ran out of time, and you’ll have to put the razor blade into the apple yourself.

Which reminds me, do they still x-ray candy over at the fire station? Has that ever turned anything up? Surely over the past 30 years or so, thousands upon thousands of razor blades and syringes and rusty nails must have been found hiding in candy bars because the news keeps talking about the subject.

Oh, by the way, anyone who comes to my door dressed as either Obama bin Biden or Juan McLame tomorrow gets no candy. I will spit in your plastic pumpkin. You’ve been warned.

My original intent was to write about an article I read in the Dayton Daily News yesterday about a Halloween-reated event happening here in Dayton. However, their website is so slow and their search feature is so awful that I’m unable to find an article they printed yesterday. There is a follow-up article to the one I intended to quote and source here, and that article may have superseded the original one causing it to disappear. If that’s the case, it’s a really lousy decision, but of the things I do like about my hometown, the newspaper is not one of them, and I’m not surprised that they could do something this stupid.

Not having the article to quote from to support the factuality of my statements blunts the force of what I write, but the point remains the same and I hope readers will understand.

As has been done for many years in many places, a cemetery around here decided to hold a charity event named “Run for Your Life” (I’ve also seen the name “Run Like Hell” used before), where persons, optionally wearing costumes, would run around and through the cemetery, on existing paved roads, to raise money for a charity, the name of which I do not remember because the Dayton Daily News can’t seem to make yesterday’s news easily available. The managers of the cemetery stressed that runners would not be running on top of grave sites, and that hired help would be provided to make sure the runners stuck to their paved course. 

An individual with several family members buried in the cemetery, whose name the Dayton Daily News no longer makes available on their unbearably slow website, took exception to the idea of a run with a whimsical name occurring in the cemetery, alleging that it was contrary to the dignity of those buried there. He stated that, should the run take place, he and others would be present with signs protesting the event.

Let’s call the gentleman who opposed the run Mr X.

Mr. X, I do not question the sincerity of your motives, nor do I question the caring you have for your deceased relatives. However, in all seriousness, I do have a few questions:

Were your relatives so humorless that they would have been offended by the spectacle of the run past (not over) their resting place? Were your relatives so indifferent to charity that they would not have accepted a few hours of activity near their final resting place during the eternity they will spend in that spot? Would your relatives have told you, in their individual ways, to lighten up and let the living have their fun?

In the end, this is all academic. The cemetery association caved and rerouted the run through the surrounding neighborhood.

So, was Mr. X right in asking that the run be rerouted? Is there something I’m missing? Why do we fawn over people in death that we’re indifferent to in life? Leave it in the comments section.