Scary

You have never truly experienced Halloween if you don’t live in Montara.

I drove around the Bay Area today, from The Coast to Mountain View to San Francisco. And, sure, I saw a fair number of goblins, wizards and Harry Potters. But, the last day of October doesn’t really start until I get home and run inside to open the door to the first Trick-or- Treaters.

To prepare for the evening, we bought four fifty piece bags of fun size mini M&M packs, and four three and a half pound bags of Tootsie Favorites. I distributed all the loot evenly in 5 big bowls and then asked each kid to take one piece. Sure, some pick more than one – and one or two grab a handful. But, still. That’s around five hundred kids who all ring the doorbell between 6:30 p.m. and 9:00 p.m.

I saw skeletons, bloody knives, dragons, severed hands, medusas, unicorns, ladybugs and lions. Darth Vaders, soldiers, mummies and robots. A princess, a man without a head, firemen, a garbage can, a pink cheetah and a kangaroo. (The scariest part of the day was hands down reading the ingredients in a tootsie roll.)

And, just how much candy did I eat today, considering I have been exposed to buckets of a huge variety of treats? How many, having attended four meetings where chocolate was placed in heaps at the center of the table? What were the consequences of spending the past three hours doling out the goods myself? And, what was my behavior when parents of these hoards of kids made chocolate chip cookies and offered them in gratitude to those of us who stock up so their kids can have a good Halloween experience?

I didn’t have a single piece. None. And when I got hungry, I went into the kitchen and made myself a cup of tea.

Pretty scary, huh?