[Breakfast: pumpkin pancakes with cottage cheese]

Every Halloween I get sulky that I can’t go trick-or-treating. I would trade going to the most hip and fun Halloween party ever, just to go trick-or-treating one last time. I’d have to drink some kind of Alice in Wonderland potion to be a small kid again, but that’s fine.

The last time I went trick-or-treating was probably in 8th or 9th grade. My friend and I decided that if we were ghosts, our ages would be less conspicuous. We were sure no one would really notice or care.

It’s cute that we were still trick-or-treating, right? I mean, people were only handing out candy. We weren’t taking anything away from the kids. We could be out egging kids, cars, and being delinquents. People should be giving us whole candy bars and money.

Halloween night came, and we dragged our old pillow cases out. Mine was a nice tie-dyed one I had made in home economics.

Friend and I cleared our throats and nervously approached the first door. An older woman with boxes of raisins answered, so we ran away. We didn’t want any nasty raisins.

[P.S. Why do bakers always have to ruin things by adding rainins for no good reason?]

After our initial trepidation wore off, we got into a rhythm of saying perky trick-or-treats, raising our voices as best we could. Since we weren’t voice-over candidates some of the neighbors gave us weird looks and, “Aren’t you a bit old to be trick-or-treating?” or “That’s not much of a costume.”

Some of them fawned over the younger kids giving them handfuls of candy, while only tossing one in our bags.

One man made light of the fact we had pillowcases, “Don’t get fat eating that all at once.”

Another woman even shut her door on us—that was particularly heart breaking. Later we came back and cut a bunch of roses from her garden.

Back at friends’ house, we sorted through our bounty and traded our least favorites. I was a fan of Baby Ruth’s, Reese’s, Milky Way, and Million Dollar bars. Friend loved M&M’s and Snickers. People rarely passed out Milk Duds, or what about Reese’s Pieces? That would have been the bomb! It was a bittersweet farewell to the “treating” part of trick-or-treating.

Prologue: The next year we dressed up in black and terrorized a group of friends with shaving cream. Tricking wasn’t too shabby either.

Alas, I still miss going to door-to-door begging for candy in an adorable costume. But, no, I don’t want to take your kids trick-or-treating. I’ve had plenty of offers. It would not be the same at all—not even a fraction.