So while driving home from work today I noticed that they put up a new sign letting me know precisely when I’ve entered Delaware. This is useful because a) it lets me know that I am now in the land of no sales tax and b) in about ten minutes I will be exiting Delaware as the state is about as wide as my living room. What is more striking is what the sign itself states.
“Delaware: Small Wonder”
Do you know what this means? From now on every single time I drive home from work I will be reminded of a horrible 80’s sitcom. Night after night I am going to be forced to try to remember the girl’s name and wonder just what type of family would decide to a) purchase a robot for cleaning duty and b) decide that robot should look like a nine year old girl. Seriously, how screwed up would that dad have to be? “Here honey, I know you want to do less housework and have another child. This accomplishes both!” I’m quite confident that I will be taking a baseball bat to the sign within a month.
Since it is All Hallow’s Eve Eve I figured that I might provide some insight into Halloween. Or at least provide some reminiscences of the Halloweens of my youth. I don’t have much to discuss about the holiday as an adult. Typically I just end up in a bar, sans costume, enjoying the show around me. That did result in the girl I was chatting up one night leaving with a penguin thus causing me to really rethink my stance on global warming. As a result, I’d rather focus on the distant past, thank you very much.
I was lucky enough to be born in that wonderful time pre both the commercialism and the insane fear that has gripped the holiday. It wasn’t this massive venture in which stores pop up with the sole purpose of selling you a poorly made costume that you would wear once and throw out. No, you would find a costume, or make one, and go out. (In my family costumes tended to be reused. I think that over the course of a decade all four of the boys in the family wore the same pirate costume.) It just wasn’t a big thing to have this expensive costume. You could still get away with throwing on a sheet and calling yourself a ghost. Just as long as it wasn’t a fitted sheet.
But the bigger thing is that this was still when you went around the neighborhood by yourself and knocked on doors. I was nine in 1982 when the Tylenol scare occurred. Being from Chicago this was a huge deal as people were dying for no apparent reason. Sending your kids out to get candy from strangers suddenly sounded like a rather odd idea. That was also my last year trick or treating because I outgrew it. I never had the “Only trick or treat at houses you know” or “We do everything at the school because it is safer”. I went with my brothers through the neighborhood in search of the best loot.
There were the good houses that would allow a nice grab into the candy bin. If you were lucky you got some Nestle Crunch bars. Less lucky and you’d get some Smarties or those damn packages of two SweetTarts. That was such a lame one. At least a fun size bar gave you a decent sense of the total package. Here it was just a tease. The worst case scenario was you’d find the one person who handed out circus peanuts. No one in the history of the planet has ever eaten one of those. I think we chucked most of ours at squirrels. We even had a sweet neighbor who gave out pennies, which made us happy because we were earning a profit.
But the best neighbor, and one that I will remember for the rest of my life, gave out the following and all of my brothers will attest to this. I know no one will believe me but this is true. Every year we would make our way to one house because the dad would hand us cans of Dr. Pepper. Yes, we would knock on the door, say “Trick or Treat” and be handed a can of refreshing Dr. Pepper. Even at seven I realized that this wasn’t quite the idea. The story was that the dad worked for the bottling company but I always like to think of him as being the guy who decided to just be different because it struck him as funny.
So have fun tomorrow, all of those in search of goodies. Next week: More Pick Up Artist and Election Night Live Blog! I’ll be writing until there is a winner or I lose my sanity, whichever comes first.
“Delaware: Small Wonder”
Do you know what this means? From now on every single time I drive home from work I will be reminded of a horrible 80’s sitcom. Night after night I am going to be forced to try to remember the girl’s name and wonder just what type of family would decide to a) purchase a robot for cleaning duty and b) decide that robot should look like a nine year old girl. Seriously, how screwed up would that dad have to be? “Here honey, I know you want to do less housework and have another child. This accomplishes both!” I’m quite confident that I will be taking a baseball bat to the sign within a month.
Since it is All Hallow’s Eve Eve I figured that I might provide some insight into Halloween. Or at least provide some reminiscences of the Halloweens of my youth. I don’t have much to discuss about the holiday as an adult. Typically I just end up in a bar, sans costume, enjoying the show around me. That did result in the girl I was chatting up one night leaving with a penguin thus causing me to really rethink my stance on global warming. As a result, I’d rather focus on the distant past, thank you very much.
I was lucky enough to be born in that wonderful time pre both the commercialism and the insane fear that has gripped the holiday. It wasn’t this massive venture in which stores pop up with the sole purpose of selling you a poorly made costume that you would wear once and throw out. No, you would find a costume, or make one, and go out. (In my family costumes tended to be reused. I think that over the course of a decade all four of the boys in the family wore the same pirate costume.) It just wasn’t a big thing to have this expensive costume. You could still get away with throwing on a sheet and calling yourself a ghost. Just as long as it wasn’t a fitted sheet.
But the bigger thing is that this was still when you went around the neighborhood by yourself and knocked on doors. I was nine in 1982 when the Tylenol scare occurred. Being from Chicago this was a huge deal as people were dying for no apparent reason. Sending your kids out to get candy from strangers suddenly sounded like a rather odd idea. That was also my last year trick or treating because I outgrew it. I never had the “Only trick or treat at houses you know” or “We do everything at the school because it is safer”. I went with my brothers through the neighborhood in search of the best loot.
There were the good houses that would allow a nice grab into the candy bin. If you were lucky you got some Nestle Crunch bars. Less lucky and you’d get some Smarties or those damn packages of two SweetTarts. That was such a lame one. At least a fun size bar gave you a decent sense of the total package. Here it was just a tease. The worst case scenario was you’d find the one person who handed out circus peanuts. No one in the history of the planet has ever eaten one of those. I think we chucked most of ours at squirrels. We even had a sweet neighbor who gave out pennies, which made us happy because we were earning a profit.
But the best neighbor, and one that I will remember for the rest of my life, gave out the following and all of my brothers will attest to this. I know no one will believe me but this is true. Every year we would make our way to one house because the dad would hand us cans of Dr. Pepper. Yes, we would knock on the door, say “Trick or Treat” and be handed a can of refreshing Dr. Pepper. Even at seven I realized that this wasn’t quite the idea. The story was that the dad worked for the bottling company but I always like to think of him as being the guy who decided to just be different because it struck him as funny.
So have fun tomorrow, all of those in search of goodies. Next week: More Pick Up Artist and Election Night Live Blog! I’ll be writing until there is a winner or I lose my sanity, whichever comes first.
2 comments:
to save you from trying to remember the girl's name, it is Vicki (some sort of acronym for her robotic status). good trivia question, i think.
LB
I live in the kind of neighborhood you grew up in. People here hand out bags of candy, closed with a twist tie. People here hand out full size and even super-size snickers bars and Hershey's bars and whatever else. People here would hand out cans of Dr. Pepper. I'm not kidding. There are a 110 families in my neighborhood - nobody fucks around. Everyone knows each other so it's almost a contest. In fact, a lot of parents are dressed up crazier and more elaborately than their children (myself included). It's good times! I love where I live.
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