I love Highland Falls on Halloween. I love the little kids with their parents who come early, while it’s still light out, including the absolute tiniest witch I’ve ever seen, with her even littler brother the spider.
(Halloween etiquette question, perhaps related to an implicit writing-teacher-etiquette question for those who work in computer labs: when you distribute candy and talk to the shorter kids, do you stoop, squat, or neither?)
And I love the big families and groups who come later, after the parade, sometimes with not-quite-finished or uncertain costumes, and how watchful and careful they are of their family members and friends, and how friendly. How connected.
And I love the last few after-eight waves of various diehards (including the no-costume dad who always asks for candy too, but I was a little worried that he was drunk this year: not cool) and teenage goths.
But this year’s absolute best, and most mystifying: at about 6:50, a skinny eight- or nine-year old boy, all in black, with a black felt western-style hat (think Stetson), black domino, and a big scythe.
Huh?
You win, kid. I didn’t even have the presence of mind to ask.
RE: Etiquette: Methinks you squat. But lowering candy in a bucket from a second story balcony while wearing goul paint is also cool. Not sure how that works pedagogically, though.
RE: 22 lbs: So now your job is to make a bracing gruel outta the remaining reeses cups and a quart of heavy cream and slurp it through a straw, steadily, until that haunted look leaves your face and you have to worry more about angioplasty than pulmonary masses.
RE: What is that costume?: My 12 year old hacked up and reconfigured a half dozen black t-shirts to make a bizarre winged thing that she called an evil flying cowboy witch — broom-hobby-horse included. I’m pretty sure nobody knew what she was but maybe she’s just rough drafting in a version of multimodal literacy.
I hope you are feeling way better.