Unhelpful

As I sat on the porch with the cats distributing tasty treats to the neighborhood kids, something was gnawing at the back of my mind.

I thought the general agreed-upon context of Halloween consisted of four easy to understand steps:

1) Dress up as something or someone else.
2) Go door to door
3) Yell “Trick or treat!” and hope to god some fat bastard’s idea of a trick was something other than letting his rottweiler make violent love to your tender orifices
4) Get candy

Now I’m not going to make value judgements on the costumes. Some are very good, and some are stupid or cookie-cutter, of course. You have varying levels of interest, various income levels, varying amounts of parental time and money to invest into this holiday which, if analyzed from a profit/loss perspective, clearlyclearly operates in the red.

What I fail to understand are the kids who come to my door that appear to be dressed up as kids. Wearing their normal baggy-ass clothes, with their jackets tied around their waist, with no sign of character identification, costuming, face paint, or obligatory plastic gore.

So much for step one. Everyone seems to get step two. Only the very youngest (and their parents) seem to have grasped step three.

I don’t mean to come off as a stickler for rules, but fuck, man!