When my children were young, I couldn't stand the smell of fresh pumpkin, but I still "toughed it out" through stifled gags and finished the job in time to place it on our doorstep, usually before some knucklehead in my hometown--probably someone I taught in class--threw it at a car or dumped it in the road.
We eventually decided to quit doing it, because occasionally, the thing didn't sit outside longer than an hour.
Idaho Falls drives me crazy. It's cold. The politics are beyond conservative. Germans would define it as brown: black being conservative, rot being liberal and brown being--well the kind of person that walks down the street with orange armbands while doing the goose step. You know, the Sieg Heil kind of person.
But I will say this. I never had my house toilet-papered or egged. In fact, when I was sick with cancer, former students visited me or at least called, and even since that time, I have students who drop by for a visit. That's the great part, the part I will really miss.
It isn't a political thing I dislike here, because I don't really care what a person's politics is. I have friends, who are conservative, some very much so. I just don't like people looking at me as being evil, which brings me back to the topic of Halloween--figuratively speaking of course. I figure if I can tolerate my friends for ideas I don't agree with in any way, they should do the same thing with me. That's what friends do.
I learned from my father that it is with discretion that you talk about two issues--politics and religion. If a person wants to know, that's one thing, but just to force an opinion is something else entirely.
But as for celebrating Halloween, I am not one of those cuckoo evangelicals, who forbid my grandchildren from scoring a sack of great candy because I think they'll lose their soul or something. If anything, I worry more about my tendency to steal a bit from their stash while they're not looking. Who can resist a Tootsie Roll or even a Tootsie Roll Pop, and I won't even mention a Snickers, Baby Ruth or Butterfinger. Usually that stash also lasts months after the night of knocking on doors and looking for candy. It's an advantage being old and infirm. I don't have to knock on doors. I just "borrow" it.
And did I mention just how much Jack enjoys Halloween.
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