The scary part, of course, is that they may jump on you. Hell hath no fury like a self-righteous parent. But it’s also possible that at least some of them do the same things you do—or would like to—and have been feeling very uneasy about it. Now you’ve got a support team.
Blamers thrive on shame. Take away their power. Do not be ashamed of making parenting choices based on who your kid is, rather than on what the neighbors will say. Why are they talking about you anyway?
Commandment 7
Eat Chocolate
Give Halloween Back to The Trick-or-Treaters
Halloween really needs another name. How about World’s Stupidest 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, reprinted on many Web sites including Halloween-Safety.com, tells parents, “Make sure, 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 an injury if fallen on.”
Fallen on?
Ding dong. Trick or—HELP! I’ve fallen right on top of on my plastic butcher knife prop—how do you like that? Darn its non-rubber-tipped sharpness, it is slicing straight through my sternum! Why oh why didn’t my mother heed that advice on the helpful Web site that just happens to be sponsored by a Halloween supply shop and buy a smooth and flexible butcher knife (or pitchfork or scythe) instead?
I have just one question for the folks who dream up those safety warnings: Have you ever seen a knife land blade-side up?
But that’s Halloween for you. A chance to be afraid of absolutely everything . . . if you’re a parent. I’m so old, 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 all-out fun-bludgeoning, thanks to a gaggle of forces 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 never got 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. Murdering them on another day just wouldn’t be satisfying, I guess, which is why they’ve shown such remarkable restraint. But a child homicide on Halloween—it just feels right.
They will kill your moppet by poisoning the candy they give out, obviously. Or by baking big, homemade cookies laced with nefarious (but chocolaty-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 they bit into it, right?
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 sickeningly 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! (Sorry. Flashing back to my own feature-writing days when we had to make ridiculous tips sound fun.)
The problem is, if you blithely ignore all these warnings, you, the sane parent, will be the one considered cavalier to the point of reckless. Really—to publicize this book and the whole idea of out-of-control parental fears thing, I had a brainstorm: “Why don’t I have my sons go trick-or-treating and then call all the news channels to come watch me let them eat a piece of unwrapped candy?”
Well, even I realized how that would make me look: “Mom Jailed for Jeopardizing Sons in Cheap Publicity Trick.” Alternatively, “Child-Endangering Mom Inspires Mass Burning of Own Parenting Book.”
And meanwhile, some reporter who bravely jumped in to snatch the candy away from my boys (and later ate it himself) would be the “hero” of the night, and we’d hear his story every year from then on in. And then everyone would buy his book, Unwrapped: The True Story of a Halloween Hero. And I wouldn’t even be able to make my point, because everyone would figure that any mom who let her kids eat unwrapped candy is right up there with Cruella de Vil, so . . . I didn’t do it. Heck, even I grew up being told not to eat candy that had been obviously unwrapped. But why? Was there ever really a rash of candy killings?
Joel Best, a professor of sociology and criminal justice at the University of Delaware, took it upon himself to find out. He studied crime reports from Halloween dating back as far as 1958, and guess exactly how many kids he found poisoned by a stranger’s candy?
A hundred and five? A dozen? Well, one, at least?
“The bottom line is that I cannot find any evidence that any child has ever been killed or seriously hurt by a contaminated treat picked up in the course of trick-or-treating,” says the professor. The fear is completely unfounded. Now, one time, in 1974, a Texas dad did kill his own son with a poisoned Pixie Stix. “He had taken out an insurance policy on his son’s life shortly before Halloween, and I think that he probably did this on the theory that there were so many poison candy deaths, no one would ever suspect him,” says Best. “In fact, he was very quickly tried and put to death long ago.” That’s Texas for you.
And then there was a time in 1970 when a five-year-old died from ingesting heroin. But it turns out that in that instance, the boy got into his uncle’s stash and accidentally poisoned himself. Afterward, the family sprinkled heroin on some candy to make it look as if a stranger had done this hideous thing.
And, OK, there was one other time some kids were given poison on Halloween. “A woman in the 1960s was annoyed with children that she thought were too old to trick or treat, so she put ant poison in their bags,” says Best. “But it was labeled, ‘ANT POISON.’ She probably thought it was funny. Until the police arrived.”
So, despite this wacky woman (who made her intentions pretty clear), we now have zero recorded instances of death by strangers’ candy. And yet look at all the things that have sprung up in response to this myth.
First and most obviously, we’ve killed the whole idea of, God forbid, baking treats for the local kids. Any cookie a kindly neighbor makes is going to be automatically dumped in the trash, so why bother? Ditto, most fruit. I’m not saying the candy companies concocted these scary rumors, but they sure aren’t knocking them down.
Then we have the concerned but misguided authorities reinforcing the fears that shouldn’t even exist. In 1995, for instance, no less a maven than Ann Landers warned her readers (basically, everyone in America who wasn’t reading her twin sister, Dear Abby), “In recent years there have been reports of people with twisted minds putting razor blades and poison in taffy apples and Halloween candy.”
Reports? None substantiated. Rumors? Yes indeed. Rumors like the ones she was spreading! And those rumors ended up actually changing the holiday. To this day, Nationwide Hospital in Columbus, Ohio—one of the biggest children’s hospitals in the country—offers free x-rays of any Halloween candy a parent is worried about.
“To be honest, it’s really fluoroscopy,” said Pam Barber, the hospital’s spokeswoman. “You dump it all out on a tray and actually pass it through the fluoroscope, and the technician is standing there, so it will pick up anything metal. So if somebody’s rammed a nail or any kind of metal into a piece of candy, that will show up.”
If the neighbors were trickier than that, however, there is little the hospital can do. “We hand out a disclaimer to parents,” said Barber. “We want them to understand that, just like a traditional x-ray, [fluoroscopy] would not pick up if someone used a hypodermic needle and injected a drug into a piece of candy.”
Isn’t th
at a weird thought? That someone in Columbus would be injecting drugs into candy? It’s the kind of thing that happens in horror movies, maybe, but it just has not happened in real life.
Yes, agreed Barber, “We’ve been very fortunate that we have never ever discovered anything questionable.”
But that’s not fortunate. “Fortunate” is when, luckily enough, something quite possible doesn’t happen. It’s fortunate when your dog knocks over the end table just after you moved your ant farm to the top of the TV. It’s fortunate when you get to the deli counter just before the guy who is ordering twelve pounds of provolone, sliced thin, for his Provolone Pride party. But to think you’re just—whew—strangely lucky that no mass murderer has yet struck in your town is really thinking about life in a whole different way. An “I’m Living in Halloween: The Movie” way.
Spokeswoman Barber was really surprised when I informed her that to the best of an expert’s knowledge, no child in America had ever been poisoned by a stranger on Halloween. Being a nice, normal person, she was delighted to hear it. In fact, once she started thinking about it, she laughed. “My gosh, our parents didn’t worry about that kind of stuff. Shoot! I can remember they would take us all over town.” Her family went to different neighborhoods where they didn’t even know anyone, and it was so fun, she said. “And now you just wouldn’t consider doing that.”
Maybe I would.
“Good for you!” she said. “It would be great to bring back some of those childhood joys.” Which is exactly what we’re trying to do here, right?
Now think about what this unfounded fear of fiends—the ones living quietly next door or in the next neighborhood—has done to the holiday. It’s not just that a hundred kids a year have to wait to eat their candy till their parents send it through Nationwide Hospital’s fluoroscopes. It’s that millions of kids curtail their actual trick-or-treating—or at least their parents do.
“Here in central Ohio,” Barber (a great source!) went on, “there’s a number of churches and organizations that now have trick-or-treat parties so you can still have the candy being distributed, but it’s through an organization you feel comfortable with. We’ve noticed a real growth in that kind of celebration of Halloween—where kids are not going door to door.”
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with parties. Love ’em. But the thing we’re forgetting is: there’s nothing wrong with going door to door either—and there’s a lot that’s even better about it. It’s a way for kids to meet their neighbors. A way for them to be independent. A way for them to make the neighborhood theirs. And even a way for them to get silly and spooked out. That can’t happen if they’re not allowed outside.
What can happen if kids are stuck inside, “Monster Mash” blaring? Aw, you know exactly what: a marketing rush to fill the void left by the demise of an actual, old-fashioned, kid-directed activity.
Halloween is huge now—$5 billion huge. Stores are jammed with ugly decorations meant to pump back in the fun that’s been drained out. How ugly do they get? Our dentist puts up a “Halloween wreath” made out of orange feathers and plastic vampire bats. It’s a hybrid of Christmas, goth, and Liberace, more painful than any cavity. But once you bring the holiday inside, you do have to decorate, and dollars will be spent (on dreck).
Bring the holiday inside, and parents start hanging out, too. They watch the kids, they help them with their games. “Here, Timmy. Let me bob for that apple for you.” It’s just like school all over again—except with parents instead of teachers, and punch instead of milk.
Some grown-ups even dictate costume choices. Many Halloween parties at schools and community centers now come with the caveat, “No scary costumes, please.” For God’s sake, isn’t scaring kids the point of the holiday? Or at least a big part of it? In England, a man was ordered by his landlord to take down the Halloween zombies he had erected in his yard because passing moms found them too “realistic.”
Excuse me, ladies: You’re saying they look too much like the real zombies you’ve met?
So that’s the overweening parent side. Meanwhile, any and every company that can possibly exploit any worries about Halloween will. “I would like to introduce Bramble Berry’s Halloween Bath Fizzies as a safe and fun Halloween activity,” the product’s publicist, Lindsey Greulich, wrote when I was asking around about new Halloween products.
The fizzies do look fun—you throw them into your bath, and they fizzle à la Alka Seltzer. But as a “safe” alternative to trick-or-treating? Or even as a “safe” new part of the holiday pantheon? Halloween has plenty of safe activities already, thank you very much: walking, begging, and gorging.
Speaking of which: “Take supplements!” the folks over at Culturelle have started suggesting at Halloween time. “Give your child a probiotic supplement, like Culturelle,” they say. “Studies show it can greatly reduce the chance of getting allergic reactions and decrease the severity of red itchy skin associated with eczema (the number one symptom of food allergies).”
So now Halloween is a time for premedication, just like a liver transplant. (And imagine if kids finally do die from tainted candy. It will be premedicated murder.)
And then there are all the things you can buy to make sure that your children, should they actually venture out, eventually make it back home. Special lights to attach to their costumes. Glow-in-the-dark candy bags, ten bucks each. Cell phones they can use to call home throughout the night. (Not that they should be out at night. “Try to finish trick-or-treating before dark,” Nationwide Hospital’s safety tips suggest.)
And more advice, from all over. Don’t share masks—they’re germy. Come to think of it, don’t wear masks—they restrict peripheral vision and can obstruct breathing. Don’t wear a dark costume—hard to see. Or a loose costume—easy to trip on. Don’t wear someone else’s costume, comes a friendly reminder from the folks at Lice MD. Guess why.
Maybe kids shouldn’t wear costumes at all.
Keep the phone number of poison control handy—that’s another oft-offered piece of advice, even though we have just established that no one gets poisoned candy on Halloween. And do not use a knife to carve a pumpkin! The tip lists usually recommend using those little kits with the plastic saws you can buy at the grocery. Yet more crap for your home.
So now you’ve got a holiday where the costumes are too dangerous to wear, the candy too dangerous to eat, the pumpkins too dangerous to carve, and the neighborhood too dangerous to explore.
But you do have festive bathtub fizzies.
Happy Halloween.
REAL WORLD
Discuss with Neighbors What
Treats Are Appropriate
Susan Purcell, the blogger behind Virtual Linguist, writes:Here in England, the Thames Valley Police have published a list of guidelines for Halloween on their “crime reduction” page:• Parents or a responsible adult should always accompany children to make sure that they stay safe.
• Parents should identify neighbours who are willing to have trick or treat calls.
• Make these neighbours aware of approximately what time you plan to call.
• Discuss with these neighbours what treats are appropriate.
• If money is given, identify a charity for this to be donated to.
• Discuss what “tricks” are acceptable with your children.
• Parents should discourage older children (teenagers) from trick or treating—it is an activity for young children. As a rule, if they are old enough to trick or treat on their own, they are too old to do it.
You can also download a poster to display in your window, which says “No trick or treat: please enjoy your night without disturbing ours.”
Going Free Range
Free-Range Baby Step: Let your kid wear a mask, borrow a costume, and carry a prop. Boo.
Free-Range Brave Step: Have your children, age nine and up, go trick-or-treating with friends you trust. Without you. Yes, do have them wear some reflective tape and only cross at corn
ers. Cars are the danger on Halloween, not psychopaths.
Giant Leap for Free-Range Kind: Let them eat their candy without you examining it! Remember: Joel Best, the professor who made a career studying Halloween dangers, never examined his own kids’ candy. (Except when he went to steal a KitKat.)
Commandment 8
Study History
Your Ten-Year-Old Would Have Been Forging Horseshoes (or at Least Delivering Papers)
“I don’t want my son to learn or think that that type of thing is OK.”
That’s what a parent wrote on Amazon regarding a DVD very clearly labeled “For adults.”
Well of course! Why would anyone want a kid to watch adult videos? That’s sick!
But . . . wait a sec. Her comment was about a DVD with Big Bird on its cover. And Bert. And Ernie. And Oscar and Grover and—what the heck is going on here?
The usual. Changing times.
The video in question is Sesame Street: Old School, Vol. 1. Released in 2006, it’s a three-DVD highlight reel of the show’s earliest years, 1969 to 1974. It’s got classic clips like Oscar the Grouch singing “I Love Trash” and Ernie in the tub with his rubber ducky. That’s not the stuff of adult videos, is it? (Is it? Please tell me no!)
The DVDs also show a whole lot of scenes of real, live children doing wild things like climbing on planks and playing in a vacant lot. They wiggle through a pipe. A couple of boys scramble to the top of a jungle gym (isn’t that illegal now?), even as a preschooler pedals her trike, helmet-free. In a scene from the very first episode, a girl who’s new to the neighborhood gets shown around by a stranger—male!—who takes her home for milk and cookies with his wife. All of which may have seemed nice and normal in 1969, but today looks like a trailer for Saw VII: This Time It’s Preschool. In fact, maybe they could have saved everyone a lot of trouble if they just called the DVD Nightmare on Sesame Street.
Free-Range Kids, How to Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry) Page 8
