For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for October 31, 2020

If I were a parent of a trick-or-treater, I’d let the kid say, “trick or treat, smell my feet, [please] give me something good to eat.”

’ tricks or treats, money or eats’

So did anyone get a rock?

More frightening than any scary costume is when one of your friends tells you that your mother was right.

Trick or Treats, Money or eats. Give us some candy or we’ll kick you in the seat.

“Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to eat!!!” I can remember that from my own Halloween years growing up. Ah, the classics never die… LOL

Success on Halloween is all about timing. Given the decline in trick-or-treaters, just wait until 7:30 or 8:00 to start out. Houses that were rationing candy an hour or two earlier will give you handfuls to get rid of excess inventory.

I lived in a rural community and there were a lot of jolly jokers in the neighbourhood. So many people determined to show me a trick rather than giving a treat (they would do both, but it sure slowed things down) and then the ones who insisted that I sing or do some other trick to earn the treat. I wish I had been more of a teenage prankster like my father was back in the late 40’s early 50’s when he and his friends would take apart a loaded wagon, and reassemble it on the roof of the barn, fully loaded no less as a prank. Of course the stories I was told about locking calves in outhouses and other similar activities in the 1910’s and 20’s were also pretty amusing to hear about, but I imagine were no fun to clean up / repair the damage done.

Nostalgia time, don’t you have to shed a tear for those naive times when even on Halloween, nobody is wearing a mask or practicing six feet apart social distancing!

I wonder what a kid today would do if someone chose “trick”? The mind boggles with the possibilities.

Here in Sweden, finding a good translation of “trick or treat” is hard. The most popular one among kids is “Prank or candy!” (in Swedish).

Trick-or-Treating during COVID-19? Pretty irresponsible, methinks.

Robot Chicken for the geography reports:

Schroeder: “I got Brazil”.

Lucy: “I got France!”

Charlie Brown{glum}: “I got Iraq.”

Loaded with Covid ;-)

Sadly we get this comic strip instead of the one Lynn Johnston originally planned showing Martha in a “sexy” Halloween costume and Elly losing her mind. Lynn thought better of that idea and she went with Elizabeth and her friends wearing costumes that cover almost every inch of their body.

Liz is a teddy bear? I went with my kids one Halloween dressed as a CARE BEAR. They were so in then.

Have a safe and Happy Halloween, everyone.

“Something good to eat” you say? We have broccoli, parsnips, kale, mustard greens, beetroot and beet greens, green beans, squash, …

Trick or Treat!

Stay back six feet.

We’ll give you something

safe to eat.

-

And wear a mask.

It’s all we ask.

It’s really such

a simple task.

When we had treaters past years nothing said that way, imagine stating that every time. gets old.

Say that at the wrong house and they might get the water hose turned on them!

All of this, including some of the comments, reminds me of the Halloween sequence in “Meet Me in St. Louis”. Trick or treating wasn’t nearly as innocent as it is these days (or even in 1991).

Sounds like this one as well:

Happy birthday to you

You live in a zoo

You smell like an ocelot

And you look like one too!

The origin is believed to have come from a Judy Blume book. Not sure which one, but I am guessing Superfudge. This sounds like exactly something that Fudge would do!

What I did to give out treats was set up an inclined evestroughing downspout eight feet long. When the kids came, I slid the treats down the spout right into their treat bag. The kids loved it. Parents thought it was a great idea. Kept the over 6 foot distance and the kids still got treats.