Halloween really needs another name. How about "World's Dumbest Warnings Day"? Does that work for you? It will if you ever look at any tips on how to have a "safe" Halloween.
One of my favorite warnings, from a Halloween supply site, tells parents, "Make sure that if your child is carrying a prop, such as a scythe, butcher knife or pitchfork, that the tips are smooth and flexible enough to not cause injury if fallen on."
Fallen on?
Ding-dong. "Trick or— HELP! I've fallen on my butcher knife prop that landed vertically — how do you like that? — on the sidewalk! Darn its non-rubber-tipped sharpness, it is slicing right through my sternum! Why, oh, why didn't my mother heed that advice on the helpful website that just happens to sell Halloween items and buy a smooth and flexible scythe (or butcher knife or pitchfork) instead?"
And that's Halloween for you. A chance to be afraid of absolutely everything — if you're a parent. I'm so old that I remember back when it was a holiday that was supposed to scare the kids.
Halloween is just the perfect example of how a fun, even revered, childhood activity has been turned into an orgy of worrying, warning, spending, obsessing and just all-out joy-bludgeoning, thanks to a gaggle of forces as thick as boiled eyeballs in cup-of-newt soup.
The biggest fear on Halloween, of course, is that somehow, your nice, quiet neighbors — the ones you've never gotten to know but somehow managed to live next to in peace and harmony the other 364 days of the year — have been waiting, like kids for Christmas, for this one day to murder local children.
They will kill your moppet by poisoning the candy they give out, obviously. Or by baking big homemade cookies laced with nefarious (but chocolatey good) drugs. Or by sticking razor blades in the proverbial apple — because of course, no one would ever notice a giant dripping gash in an apple before biting into it, right?
Who eats an apple on Halloween anyway?
It is amazing how far-fetched most of these fears look upon reflection, yet there is not one bit of Halloween advice that doesn't warn against those very evils. Feed your kids a big "spooky" dinner before they go out, the magazines tell us, so they won't be tempted to eat any of the candy before they bring it home for inspection.
My God, has being even sickening full ever stopped a kid from stuffing himself even sicker with candy? And what kind of Halloween would it be — what kind of kid would it be — if no candy got eaten on the way? I'm just surprised no one has suggested bringing along a bag of dried organic figs in case the giggling goblins want something good to gobble! (That's how the magazines write. Sorry.)
But blithely ignore these candy fears entirely and you, the sane parent, could be the one considered cavalier to the point of reckless.
So maybe it's time to fight back. Maybe it's time to re-normalize the idea that kids are not beset by candy poisoners and fruit tamperers, by sending them out — in a group, on their own — and letting them gorge themselves silly this Halloween.
If you try this seemingly crazy idea (one that was completely common a generation ago, when crime rates were higher), you will be doing something truly scary: bucking the culture of fear.
And that will be sweeter than any Jolly Rancher.
Lenore Skenazy is president of Let Grow, founder of Free-Range Kids and author of "Has the World Gone Skenazy?" To learn more about Lenore Skenazy (lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.
View Comments