Trunk Or Treat

Growing up in Idaho, I am used to Halloween evenings where everyone is dressed as their favorite Eskimo. There is nothing quite like spending a huge amount of time shopping for the perfect Halloween costume only to find that the night when you can actually use it, it is 20 degrees with a howling wind. I can remember countless times when I took the kids our trick-or-treating on sleds with it snowing all around us. So when we moved to Arizona seven years ago, this holiday took on a whole new meaning. Children could actually go around in the costumes that they had picked out. Besides the nice weather, we were also introduced to a Halloween tradition that was very foreign to us, the trunk-or-treat. This is an activity where a community group all park in a large parking lot with the back of their cars facing each other. The parents decorate the trunks of their cars and the children make their way to each car in their costumes and are rewarded with candy. I suppose that this activity was born from a fear by the parents of allowing their children to wander the streets begging for candy to the houses of complete strangers. It is fun to see how everyone decorates their cars and the kids seem to really enjoy themselves. This activity has the same problem as trick-or-treating though, there are always a few kids who are well beyond the trick-or-treating age. These kids mostly come dressed as themselves and act like punks hoping to bully adults into giving them candy. Well, I came prepared this year with a case of silly string. Each child who was older than I thought appropriate was doused in multi-colored silly string. It was great. It didn't take more than a handful of these older kids before word got out to avoid the White Suburban with the Diamondbacks decorations. That holiday ain't half bad.