At which point your friend (in this case my husband) turns to you and says, "Oh come on now - you have to suspend belief. If she didn't do that there would be no movie!"
(It's really fitting that this is the analogy I chose since it IS Halloween and all.)
All the neighbors around here are telling these stories over the last couple of weeks about how INSANE Halloween is here. Come on.... really? "Oh no - not kidding. Went through 18 bags of candy last year..." or "30 bags wasn't enough - they come banging on your door even if the lights are off and you pretend not to be home!"
Hm. This I'm having a hard time believing - not these gentle sweet well-mannered Japanese children and their uber-polite parents!
Even so - we were going to go on base to trick-or-treat - which my husband quickly opposed because "you can't go in a neighborhood you don't live in to bug neighbors that are strangers." Hey, we ain't in Canton anymore, my friend.
We had a plan set to go with the Neathery family on Kadena and trick-or-treat in the townhouses. Well, some water main break happened by the main gate (that goes directly out to our house) so we ended up bagging that idea because we thought we wouldn't get home until 10pm on a school night. Ok - suck it up and dress up the kid and get out there. Anne called me and said, "Bring a couple of folding chairs out and we'll set up a table with a bowl of candy and all the kids will come by on the block." Done.
We ate at 5pm. Seriously - it wasn't even 6 by the time we were forced to have Mia in her costume and ready because the kids were already outside and Logan and Nikolas were banging on the door telling her to COME ALREADY BECAUSE WE ARE WAITING FOR YOU SO PLEASE HURRY UP AND COME DOWN AS SOON AS YOU ARE READY PLEASE.
(patience is NOT a virtue of a 6 or 7-year-old kid, in case you were wondering that)
I didn't buy much candy because we live in a hotel - I really doubted that kids were coming up to our door to trick-or-treat - I didn't know we'd be home. So I went downstairs with my 2 bags of candy, the Neatherys had a few more than I did, and saw that the WHOLE ISLAND was here on our street saying "tdeek o tdeet" in a Japanese accent as I struggled to learn "I'm sorry we are totally out of candy. " THEY LOVE this holiday! And they loved the carved pumpkins, the American kids in their costumes - it was all very friendly - but it was like a bunch of really cute dressed up vultures or hyenas!
Seriously. The 2 bags I brought were gone in 10 minutes. And that was ONE PIECE PER PERSON! Observe a few of the pictures:
What are these costumes? I DO NOT KNOW - but the kids were so darned cute. I felt really bad to still be standing out there for an extra 20 minutes after we were out of candy but I did!
Bless their hearts, OUR kids went around the block, got half a bag of candy and DUMPED theirs into the big bowl to hand out MORE since there were so many disappointed children! So I figure I'll get the bags on clearance tomorrow and give the kids a bunch of good sugar since they didn't really save any for themselves. I should've known there was a reason all the stores on base had HUGE displays full of candy. And that all my neighbors told me to buy 30 bags...I think next year I'll start Halloween Candy layaway in July.
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