As many of you know, I really enjoy Halloween. Thus, it probably won’t come as that much of a surprise that since I love Halloween as an adult I also loved Halloween as a kid. As soon as October hit, I wanted our house decorated and our pumpkins picked out (back when I liked pumpkins). Throughout the month I would do Halloween crafts, read spooky stories, and beg my mom to buy Halloween treats.

Although I loved the entire Halloween season, nothing beat Halloween night. Between the time span of being a toddler up until right before I became a teenager, my siblings and I had a Halloween night routine we did every year.

That one year I dressed up as a construction worker.

Let me say it right now, there really isn’t anything special or crazy about what we did. In fact, when I explain our traditions it won’t take me long. However, it was always fun and memorable. Looking back 20 years, I remember all of those Halloweens very fondly. Just a few memories…

My mom would play an audio tape of spooky Halloween music and we would light our jack-o-lanterns in the kitchen with the lights turned off. We would then carry them outside to sit on our porch for the evening. We would go upstairs and get in our costumes and my mom would take photos of the three of us.

As trick-or-treaters started to come to our house, we would get very, very anxious to set out on our own trick-or-treating adventures. During the years when we needed an adult companion, my dad would take us out around the neighborhood (I probably trick-or-treated with him until I was at least eight or nine). However, when we became old enough to trick-or-treat with our own groups of friends we still stayed primarily in our neighborhood as well as the one connected right to it. As the development was large and the houses were all pretty much close together, there was no reason to go anywhere else.

We always paid homage to the era of my parents and took pillow cases with us. Always. When it came to trick-or-treating, I had decent stamina. I walked those streets until my feet were sore and my pillow case was too heavy to carry (but would any trick-or-treater really admit  to anything different?).

My brother and sister will agree, post trick-or-treating was always our favorite part. No matter what group of friends we were with or what route around the neighborhood we took, the three of us would always meet back at the house later that night. We would go down into our basement and dump out our loot onto the floor. From there we would sort our candy (big time nerds) into piles based on type. When we had our groups of candy bars, tootsie rolls, hard candy, sour candy, etc. laid out we would then trade! We traded candy for an hour or so as I would always do my best to get all the pieces that combined chocolate and peanut butter.

After we finished our wheeling and dealing, we would get large clear Tupperware containers from my mom and place our candy inside of it. For whatever reason, we really got a kick out of seeing our candy within the container. In those early years, my parents were pretty strict with bedtimes and I remember laying in my bed while our doorbell would still ring with trick-or-treaters (so depressing). However, as we got older, we would stay up and watch all the Halloween specials and movies that were on until late into the night. Awesome memories.

I cherish those innocent Halloween years. However, in the near future Sidney and I will be creating them all over again. I look forward to it. Don’t Blink.