Growing up in the mountains (the burning ones), trick or treating was a car-driven, crowded affair, with pretty much all of the kids on the mountain descending onto the single neighborhood that had the necessary attributes of being somewhat flat with close-together houses.

Since then, I’ve lived in apartments, worked or otherwise been unable to participate in the ritual that is, essentially, giving candy to strangers, so it was with an blank slate that I lit our jack o’lanterns, turned on the porch light and opened our gate, thus indicating our willingness to provide the afore-mentioned candy.

Lest I keep you in suspense, let me say right now that overall, it was a delightful time.  Itty-bitty Cinderellas, a handful of excited Spidermen, a fairy princess and a bunch of ghoulish looking things were bouncing up the steps at a slow, but steady pace. I asked every one of them to say the line (it is a ritual, after all!), but I gave candy even to the ones who stared up with big eyes at this back-lit stranger looming in front of them.

With the sound of children in the street, the pumpkin seeds and chocolate on the coffee table, Halloween on the television and a room full of flickering candlelight, it was pretty much a quintessential Halloween evening.

But there was also a tinge of oddness about the whole thing that I wasn’t quite expecting.

The first kid who walked up was wearing jeans and an orange T-shirt.

“What are you?” I asked, suspicious already.

“A rapper,” he replied.

“Oh,” I said as I handed him his mini-Snickers. “Maybe next year, a little bling, eh?”

The kid who shouted from the street “You got candy?” made me feel a bit, well, used. The two school girls who were dressed as school girls (not Catholic ones… Wilson ones) and held out their backwards-sweatshirt hood for their candy, like some weird reverse kangaroos, make me slightly annoyed.

The un-costumed adults of an ambiguous age (20? 40? It was dark) who were traveling with a two-year-old ladybug in a stroller and held out four (four!) bags stoked my ire a little bit. When they said, “You’re not gonna give us candy?” I practically laughed in their faces.

“No,” I said. “You’re an adult! And you’re not even in a costume!”

“It’s for her,” they said, hastily.

“Well, she’s two,” I pointed out. “Maybe she doesn’t need four bags of candy.”

The piece de resistance, however, came at the end of the night. Three older boys, about 14 and utilizing the “mask as complete costume” approach, walked up the steps.

“Look,” I said to them, “I have four pieces of candy left in here. I can give it to you, or I can save it for the next six-year-old little girls dressed as a princess. You guys make the call.”

After a few moments of blank stares in which I presume they were trying to decide if I was joking, one of the boys thrust out his bag.

“I want it!” he said.

“I’ll let them have it,” his buddy blurted out over him, looking rather proud with his choice.

The first boy instantly looked sheepish as I dropped the candy bar in his bag. (The third boy was wearing a Mike Myers mask and just looking at me silently, which, given our choice of film for the evening, was rather unnerving.)

As fate would have it, at that very moment, two Cinderellas, a toddler ballerina and a baby bear walked up, all bubbly energy and light sticks.

“Trick-or-treat!” they sang.

The second boy grinned.

“Here you go princesses!” I said as handed them the last pieces out of the bowl, eyeing the first boy as he rummaged in his bag.

“Here!” he said, pushing the candy toward me.

“No, you give it to her,” I said. “That was really nice of you to give that up for them. Thanks.”
 
The girls looked confused, as the other trick-or-treater gave the little baby bear his candy, but the boys looked pleased. And then they left and I blew out the jack o’lanterns and turned off the porch light to go finish the movie, full of Happy Halloween spirit.

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PostScript: Thankfully, all of my mountain friends’ families and homes were safe. My heart goes out to all of the families across California who were affected by the fires. I hope that there was still good trick-or-treating in Cedar Glen last night.