Another Humdrum Halloween

It's raining where I live and the forecast is for it to continue all day and night and into tomorrow. Still, the robotic children of robotic parents will don unconvincing costumes and trek door to door, navigating the piles of slimy wet leaves and puddles which by this evening will have become sizable, in order to get free candy that is readily for sale year round in every supermarket, corner grocery, convenience store and bodega. One wonders why. 

When I was a kid, before a poisoned jar of Tylenol scared everyone out of their wits and brought about those annoying protective seals on everything that sometimes make you crazy trying to open, Halloween was a lot more fun. You never knew what you'd get. My own mother, who was far from a domestic goddess, went to great lengths to prepare individual bags of goodies, each one containing different treats and all tied up in a dinner napkin with a big orange bow.

The best treat, or worst depending on your sense of the absurd, came from a Spanish lady in our neighborhood who came to the door holding a frying pan and, using a spatula, dropped some sort of sweet, still steaming tortilla-like pancake right into your Halloween bag. Naturally this made a bit of a mess, melting whatever it hit as it landed with a plop on the already gathered-goodies. Many less adventurous kids who couldn't take a joke boycotted her house after their first time, but I actually found it fun and funny and so returned every year.

Now it's snack-size Snickers, Reese's, Milky Ways and those annoying Starbursts that lodge in your teeth. Nothing at all out of the ordinary. Why bother?