Saturday, November 01, 2003

Halloween Recap
The ghosts and goblins had a wonderful evening weatherwise to haunt the neighborhood and extort candy from its inhabitants.

Sara recently posted on the issue of obesity in the US. Last night I had some insight as to why this is happening. As groups of children went house to house tick-or-treating, their lazy parents drove along them with their hazard lights on. At one point I looked down the street and saw about eight cars inching along with their hazard lights on. We live in a nice neighborhood and the weather was perfect, so there just can't be any excuse for not walking along with your children.

Meanwhile, although I ate too much candy (it was a VERY good night), I worked it off. We live on the third floor, so everytime the doorbell rang, I had to go down and back up. I did this a good dozen or so times. Forget the stairmaster!

Our dog was jealous. Everytime I open the door, he looks at me longingly hoping that he can come along, so doing this so many times in a short period of time without inviting him even once made him quite surly. Moreover, we don't have many guests over to our apartment, so the only time our doorbell rings is when there is a pizza delivery. This is very exciting for him. The bell rings, I go out and come back with a delicious smelling box. The pizza we get usually has a little dough-ball in the middle which he gets once we are done eating if he has been good. To him, I am sure, it is a pretty cool routine. Last night the bell kept ringing and everytime I failed to come back with the box. What was up with that? In fact, towards the end he looked very confused and annoyed.

I was amused by the "out -of-towners" that came to our upscale neighborhood (because of the proximity to the university, grad students live here too and we get killed on the rent) to get the better loot. I am not sure what the larger houses and estates were giving out, our treat-bowlhad fun-sizes (why are they called that?) of Crunch, Twix, Whoppers, 100 G Bars, and the classic Necco Wafers. Nothing special.

Always the anthropologist, I noticed the pattern of which candy different children took. Toddlers were drawn to the Necco wafers, African American children picked the Whoppers, the university students who came by were either enthused or repulsed by the Necco wafers, and pre-adolescent boys were very greedy taking anything edible. Some of these I can figure out, others remain a mystery.

A few doorbell rings went unanswered. Some during dinner and then towards the end of the evening when I pooped out from the running up and down the stairs. Amazingly I also pooped out at the point when there was just enough candy left for us to keep.

Hope you all had fun!

No comments: