I Can't Wait to Give Candy to Trick-or-Treating Teenagers This Halloween

I hope I finally get trick-or-treaters this Halloween. I’m going to be ready for them. I’m going to have treats for the kids and glow stick bracelets and stickers for people with allergies and a secret cooler of beer for the parents who seem like they might want some. And if you show up to my house, I will give give you stuff. I don’t care if you’re trick-or-treating teenagers. I don’t even care if you’re a teenager from another neighborhood! If you show up at my door, I will give you candy. Because it’s Halloween, and Halloween is about fun and candy and not being a neighborhood-policing Halloween Grinch.

I might go more into the permissive realm than some people, because Halloween is my favorite holiday. But of all my best Halloween memories, none of them stands out quite as much as the very last time I ever went trick-or-treating. I was 13 or 14 and a little immature, as these things go. I was smart and obedient so adults called me “mature,” but I also spent my weekends watching TGIF like the 10-year-olds and didn’t love anything in the world as much as Saturday Morning Cartoons. I liked that I was allowed to drink coffee and go to the movies by myself, but in a lot of ways I was still a kid. So when Halloween came around, I dove in with as much gusto as when I was 8.

That year I went out to the suburbs to sleep over at a friend’s house with a bunch of other kids. We dressed up like vampires, which basically meant half of us were wearing all black and the other half were wearing poet shirts and velvet vests and looked like Prince. We were all wearing a lot of black eye makeup and lipstick and thinking we were totally hot, in a “I’m a gothy teenager in 1994” kind of way. We went house to house, trick or treating, getting candy, and generally had a totally awesome time.

Then at the end, we rang a doorbell and an old lady came out and looked at us with disgust and said, “No, you go away, you’re too old!” and slammed the door right in our faces. That was extremely rude, and mean, and embarrassing. After that, we all just slinked off in an embarrassed fashion to watch TV and eat candy in my friend’s basement. I think that’s genuinely the last house I ever trick-or-treated at, and I am pretty sure I could pick that mean old lady’s face out of a lineup.

I might still be mad about it.

So I am never, ever going to be a mean old Halloween Grinch. If you show up at my door, you are getting candy. I don’t care if you’re a set of parents trick-or-treating with a sleeping infant dressed as a pumpkin and you’re obviously going to eat the candy yourself. I don’t care if the parents bring trick-or-treat bags, too. I don’t care if you’re a teenager, and I don’t care if you’re from a different neighborhood. Show up, and I will give you candy and be happy about it, because I have a house full of fun-sized Snickers and Halloween is wonderful.

But if you set up your Christmas decorations before Halloween, I will show up on your lawn and act like I’ve never seen a Christmas light before while I perform the entire “What’s This!?” song from The Nightmare Before Christmas.