Costumes & Candies

Just like last year, Ann joined her friend Elizabeth for Halloween, and Elizabeth's father and I walked with them around their neighborhood and then ours in the late afternoon. There was less wind this year than last, along with clear skies, though it wasn't that warm.

Ann had found a blue princess dress and peaked cap that her sister had worn, once upon a time; Elizabeth had a pink princess dress that she said was Princess Peach, or Princess Peach Toadstool in full, according to various authoritative Super Mario web sites. The iterations of Mario Bros. have had a very light impact on my life -- they're the guys in Donkey Kong as far as I'm concerned -- so I'll take their word for it.

We did see small versions of Mario and Luigi out looking for candy during our rounds. Other costumes included various zombies (one was a football player), skeletons, witches and characters from pop fiction: Capt. Hook, Minnie Mouse and at one point, Princess Leia and Darth Vader, who seemed to be in separate groups across the street from each other. Vader didn't try to take Leia prisoner, however.

There was no one dressed as Snooki, a Chilean miner, a bedbug or an invasive Asian carp, to be topical. My favorite costume-sighting was a boy wearing two cardboard boxes. A larger one around his torso, a smaller one on his head. The larger one had arm holes, the smaller one eye holes. Images of WALL-E, printed from web sites, were taped to the outside of the box. So he was WALL-E.

Neither Lilly nor Ann collected anything that odd on their rounds. If I were more energetic, or maybe neurotic, I would catalog the candies by manufacturer, just to show how few companies actually control the confection trade. For my own part, I went downmarket this year in giving candy away: Tootsie pops, Lemonheads, Smarties and Mary Janes, the last of which are a Necco product, much like Bit-O-Honey, and with the same potential for filling removal. All these were available in $1 bags at the last dollar store I visited.