The Good Old Days

Halloween is not nearly as fun as it used to be. Trick or treating in the daytime? Healthy treats? Ugh. (Somebody dropped organic kale into my grandson Charlie's bucket and I found ground flax seed on the bottom of Princess Hadley's bag.)  

When my kids were young, I saw it as my duty to scare the living hell out of them. I hid in the linen closet once for two hours practicing my moans. I turned our basement into Mommy's Little House of Horror! Enter if you Dare! And our front yard was a cemetery that was so dead-like that it was featured on the local news.

Too much you say? 

"Child's play," according to my pal, Cindy Turner, who one year sent out invitations to a group of banshees, I mean, misguided middle-school girls, who had been tormenting her eleven-year-old daughter, Amy, for months.


                           IT'S A HAUNTED HALLOWEEN SLUMBER PARTY! 

When: October 31 7 P.M. 

Where: Amy Turner's backyard.

What to Bring: Your sleeping bags. 

The enticing invitation also promised "yummy treats" and "an evening you'll never forget!" 
What it failed to mention were the high school boys Cindy had hired to dress up as zombies and throw a  slab of raw meat into the tent shortly after midnight. The boys were also to make sure that they extracted promises from the mean girls that from then on they'd be so very much nicer to Amy before they agreed to shuffle away into the woods.

Ah...the good old days.  When treats were sweet, and the tricks scarred you for life.