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Thursday, November 6, 2008

MARLA NEWHOOK: What's up with driving kids on Halloween?

posted by BOFarrell at 8h47

by Marla Newhook

Kids these days have no stamina.
Halloween couldn’t have come any earlier for my little “dead” biker and half-devil-half-angel when we headed out the door to terrorize our friends and neighbours at the crack of dark last Friday.
However, less than an hour into our trick-or-treating, when we barely had covered the streets near our home in Pincourt, my son declared he’d had enough of the night’s revelries and wanted to play at his friend’s house.
What’s up with that?
My daughter had been picked up by a friend to head out to the Omni-Centre where the city had apparently organized a Halloween party in the park. Summer camp counsellors handed out candy and little goblins and ghouls played on an inflatable slide.
As my friends and I sat outside the house doling out treats, we noticed an unusual number of cars driving up, dropping off their kids and idling their vehicles as their costumed children zigzagged from house to house.
After a couple of minutes of chatting with one another, the parents piled all the kids back into their vehicles and they all drove down the street to the next block of homes.
Is it any wonder obesity is rampant among our youth when they can’t even walk the streets in search of the junk food? When did we reach the point where parents have to drive them around to solicit candy?
I can understand the concept of parents accompanying their little monsters on the Halloween route. However, I’m not quite clear on why they need to be driven to their destination. Are they from a neighbourhood where Halloween doesn’t exist?
My friends and I lamented the good old days when we were kids. On Halloween night, we left the house at nightfall with pillowcases and hit every single home in a five-mile radius.
When our pillowcases overflowed and got too heavy to carry, we made a pit stop at home and left again for yet another round of trick-or-treating.
With throbbing feet and runny noses (depending on the temperature that night) we would head home hours later and inspect our haul. Our discards were given to younger siblings, and anything else was categorized, traded, eaten and hidden for another day. If you were lucky, your candy would stretch well into the Christmas season or until your mom got sick of cleaning up candy wrappers and/or needed the pillowcases back.
In any case, you won’t find me driving my kids around on Halloween. If they want cavity-inducing junk, they can work for it just like I did.

Marla Newhook is a journalist and the mother of two.
She currently works part time
at West Island Citizen Advocacy as their publicity
representative