Candy, candy, candy

This is one of the more distressing parts of Halloween. No not getting candy, although I am sure many parents dread the thought of their kids pinballing off the walls for the next couple of weeks till the candy is gone.

But parents as well as kids need to be aware of the problems out in the world when it comes to getting candy from strangers. Waaaaaaaay back when, when I was a kid and went out trick or treating, we pretty much stuck to our own neighborhood, and 90% of the time we knew everyone whose house we went to. I am afraid these days that isn't the case.

Now I'm not going to go on about the old razor blades in apples deal or anything like that. Sure it still may happen on occasion and is something parents definitely need to keep an eye our for as well as kids. But there can be other problems in addition to psycho people who get off on giving razor bladed apples or candy "laced" with something.

It can be as simple as some old stuff that has passed it's sell by date. Or something that should be sealed up and the seal has been broken. Or it could be something like this. There is a chocolate covered candy coin, Sherwood brand Pirate's Gold milk chocolate coins, that has been recalled after testing positive for an industrial chemical called melamine.

Here are a few links to stories concerning this issue:

Yahoo Stories

Truth Or Fiction.com

Congo

Snopes

and here is a picture of what the candy looks like


Unfortunately there are a few problems with this besides the fact that the candy is bad. From the pictures you can see that they sell these in either a small bag or a smaller pint container. Odds are if someone has these to give out they are not going to give each kid a whole bag or even a whole pint container of the candy. They are most likely going to just have them mixed in a large bowl or something like that for kids to pick from. So it's going to take some looking to see if the ones being given out are the bad ones or not.

The other problem is stuff like this is the kind of stuff that kids eat on the run, it's small and easy to unwrap and pop in their mouth. So it could be gone from your kids bag before they even get home.

Best scenario here in my opinion is to make sure to warn your kids before they go out that there is some bad chocolate candy coins out there and to please hold onto them until they get home so you can check them out and make sure they aren't the bad ones.

From what I can see from the picture it looks like the coins have an embossed image of the Liberty Bell on one side, and a head shot of Ben Franklin on the other. So maybe show the picture above to your kids so they know what to look out for and ask them to please hold off on eating any chocolate coins until they get them home and you can check them out.

I'm not going to go on and on about all the other possibilities that are out there on bad candy or apples, etc. There are way to many to list. Obviously the possibility is out there for your kids to get some bad stuff. But you don't want to ruin the fun of Halloween and getting TONS of candy for your kids. Just ask them to please be smart and check out anything they get before they eat it while they are out and about. Tell them to use common sense, I know I know...this is kids we are talking about, but tell them anyway. If something doesn't look like it's in it's original container, wrapper, box, etc., tell them to hold off till they get home so you can check it out.

And don't let stuff like this ruin Halloween. As I said, we all know that it does indeed happen, but not often enough to make yourself or your kids crazy worrying about it. As long as they use just a little bit of common sense and care, they will be fine.

Why Halloween is the best holiday..

As I stated in an earlier post, Halloween is with out a doubt my favorite holiday of all.

1) You don't have to travel all over creation to go visit relatives that half the time you don't remember or don't really want to see.

2) You don't have a ton of credit card bills to pay off when it's over.

3) You don't spend most of your waking hours agonizing over what present to get for who.

4) It's not really a "drinking" holiday so all the nuts aren't out racing around the streets and highways trying to stay in their lane.

5) It doesn't involve spending half your day cooking enough to feed a small army.

It's just a time for good clean fear and terror! Whether it's seeing the latest slasher / gore fest that's being released, or heading out with your friends to find the best haunted hay ride, or haunted house, or haunted igloo, or whatever haunted place you have around. Or scaring the life out of the neighborhood kids who come to your door looking for candy.

It doesn't matter how you celebrate Halloween. As long as you either get scared silly or get to scare the bejesus out of your neighborhood kids or your friends. Or both, it's all about having a good time being terrified out of your wits!

My oldest daughter was born on Halloween day back in 1992 and I believe she has become as much as a Halloweenie as I am. She isn't much into the whole being scared out of her wits like I am, but she loves to help scare the neighborhood kids who come around on Halloween. Especially the older teenagers who are running around the neighborhood trying to scare the younger trick or treaters that are out and about.

Hopefully we'll have some good weather this year, as it seems like lately it's been a bit on the cold side up here in Western PA during the end of October. I guess as long as it doesn't snow like it did that one year I shouldn't complain. 8 )

Scary stuff....

I think deep down we all like to be scared, the adrenaline rush, the fear, the not knowing what's next. Of all the things to do during Halloween season, scary movies, haunted houses, etc, they're all geared to prey on that basic primordial thing deep down inside you....fear.

One of my favorite things to do during the Halloween season was find haunted houses. Not an actual house that was haunted, but places set up to scare you silly. Haunted houses, haunted hayrides, etc. Every Halloween they set up the amusement park near my house for Halloween, and it's a blast. The park is all decorated with the whole Halloween theme and every year the place is packed. I don't know what it is about being scared to death that entices us to go to these places. But I do know that I go out of my way every year to try and find them.

Some people don't share this feeling of course and I could never understand why, and of course they look at me and ask the same question.."Are you crazy"? Why do you want to go somewhere that they are going to try and scare you out of your skin? And you know what? I can't answer them. I don't know why I enjoy it so much...I just know that I do.

Whether it's going to a good gory slasher movie, like Friday the 13th, or Nightmare on Elm Street, or Texas Chainsaw Massacre to name a few classics, or the newer ones like the Saw series. There is just something about that feeling of being terrified out of your wits that get's me going. Or heading out on a quest to find a good haunted house set up, or haunted hayride, and having someone jump out in a Leatherface mask wielding a chainsaw, or a Michael Meyers mask and waving around a machete. It just gets my blood pumping and I love it.

I don't know if anyone can explain it, they reason behind the desire to be scared to death, all I know is every year without fail when the weather starts to get cool, and the leaves start to change the first thing I start thinking about is how much longer till Halloween, and I start scouring the Internet for places near me that I can go to get the crap scared out of me.

I am sure some psychology major could go on and on about why we like to do this to ourselves but you know what...I could care less about the reasons why I get like this at Halloween. All I care about is getting out there and finding as many places as I can that will make the hair on the back of my neck stand up, my blood racing through my veins, and my heart starts beating so fast I can feel it pounding in my chest, you know what I'm talking about...Halloween!

Halloween Season

Halloween has probably been my favorite holiday for as long as I can remember. Sure Christmas is great but there's something about Halloween. When I was younger I would start counting the days after school started until Halloween, I would start thinking of costumes and what I was going to be.

But the real fun started when I got older and got my own place. We lived in a big old house just outside Pittsburgh, (in Shadyside for all you western Pennsylvanians), that had been converted into a bunch of apartments. My roomates and I lived on the top floor, and we got together with the kids who lived below us, it was a college area, and did up the house like you wouldn't believe.

I got the idea from my childhood days, one of our neighbors was as fanatical as I was about Halloween. They would set up their whole house like a haunted house. I mean the entire house, outside, upstairs, downstairs. They got the whole family involved. It was unbelievable.

So my roomates and I did up our place like a huge walk through haunted house. Kids would come from all over. I had my stereo system set up with the speakers in the windows and all through the place with the scary sounds playing, dry ice in containers so the whole place was fogged in, we had people dressed up hiding all through the place. We set up a coffin and had someone laying down in there with a small hose from a compressor in his hand, and the coffin was filled with candy. He was just laying there like a corpse with his hands crossed on his chest, the air compressor nozzle was palmed in his hand. The kids had to reach in and grab a piece if they wanted it, and when they would reach in he would shoot them with a blast of air from the compressor.

We were trying to keep from touching the kids as we didn't want to scare them to badly or start up any kind of problems. It would get bigger and bigger each year. We got to the point where we started getting the house ready a month or more before Halloween. It started getting pretty involved. We did have a few complaints from some of the older neighbors who called the cops on one or two occasions. Luckily the police were used to dealing with college kids and all in all considered our stuff harmless, and the kids in the neighborhood loved it! We would get people traveling a pretty good distance to come and check it out as word of mouth got around over the years. We were even made it onto the evening news one year, traffic was lined up for quite a ways from people coming to see what all the fuss was about.

Unfortunately all good things must come to an end, I moved from PA way down yonder to New Orleans. I was living in the French Quarter down there and although we still had a good time at Halloween it was nothing like the good old days in Shadyside. But I did move back up to PA after about 8 years...but that's for another day, gotta get going here, kids need chauffered around as usual....