Trick or Cheat

It's sad to admit, but now that I am a senior in college, I'm fairly certain I have just completed my final trick-or-treating escapade. It's true, most trick-or-treaters lose sight of the magic of taking candy from strangers long before college, but I have persisted, with the help of the two young girls I babysit.

This year it was unseasonably warm, yet rainy and muddy. In anticipation of this weather, my friend and I prepared detective costumes incorporating black rain coats to shield us from the unfortunate weather. The only actual detective garb consisted of handmade paper badges safety pinned to our jackets, along with notebooks and pens we kept in our pockets to record evidence. Our costumes did look rather lame on the outside, and the mother of the girls we escorted offered to let us borrow two brief case-type bags to make our costumes more legit. The detective bag I used was a red leather purse with shoulder straps, but I think it actually may have worked against me. Since it looked purse-like, a lot of adults thought I was just carrying it to carry it. As one adult passionately commented however, "people should expect any bag at the door at Halloween is for candy." Amen. Still, my friend and I left many candy-giver-outers wondering if we were just accompanying the girls or if we were also trick-or-treaters.

On this gloomy Halloween evening, several cars were seen slowly rolling down the streets, carrying the lazy "trick-or-treater cheaters" who refused to walk from house to house, or whose parents wanted to shield them from the treacherous sprinkling of rain and occasional puddle. The girls laughed at them as we trudged up and down driveways on foot. The youngest girl in our group had decided to wear high heels as part of her drama queen costume. I knew she would suffer, but there was no talking her out of it. Halfway through the candy route she started giving in, huffing and puffing, but relentlessly exclaiming, "If I don't get more candy I'll die." And in her next breath she admitted, "I wish I had my power scooter." Instead of stooping down to trick-or-treater cheater level, we cut our losses and went home early. There was still plenty of candy to go around.