I hear this crabbing every single year because I live in what freaked out white suburbanites think of as the hood, and from the next neighborhood over, the churches bring kids in vans and sometimes a bus.
WHICH IS FRICKIN’ GREAT.
From my perspective, I get to look at a variety of adorable babies in costumes, hand out candy, make them happy, and my kid gets to show off her costume to a wider audience
From theirs, they get a goddamn Snickers bar and to hang out in a place where they aren’t as likely to be mugged or killed.
“But I’ll run out of candy! It’s too expensive to buy for all these kids,” these people whine, and you know, just go inside when you run out and turn off your light. Halloween candy is expensive, I get it. But if you run out, you run out.
The first year we did a table in front of our condo building we ran out of candy in like an hour. The second year I bought rafts and rafts of it, and we had like six kids. There’s no way to tell.
“But I only want to give candy to the kids that live here!” Fuck you. No, seriously, fuck you. First of all, you can’t possibly be implying that you can tell, on sight, which kids “belong” in your neighborhood, are you? What would be the identifying factor?
Not the color of their skin, surely?
Second of all, fuck you again. Your ‘hood’s kids are not inherently more deserving than the next town over. If you can afford to live in my neighborhood generally you can afford some cheap candy, and if you can’t, again, go inside and turn off the light. But don’t turn a fun holiday into a power trip for your stupid, smug, self-satisfied suburban horseshit and try to get out of feeling guilty that you live in a nice enough place that people want to come trick or treating and other people live somewhere where they can’t go outside safely.
God, people suck.
A.
120% agreed! I mean, wtf?! Who would dare be angry because children are out trick or treating?! Oh, horror of horrors! What happened to the days when there were massive groups of trick or treaters crowding the streets and households would just turn off their outside lights when they ran out of candy? Really, they must put out a sign to display what A-holes they really are? GGGRRR
Of course this isn’t about race, because it’s never about race (h/t Charlie Pierce). Besides, Justice Roberts and his Supreme Court have declared that racism is totally over in the United States. And the marker board grouch’s use of the word “dozens” doesn’t mean anything racial. YOU’re the real racist!
Hey asshole bringing color into the issue, NO it does not mean anything racial when a person says “dozens into the neighborhood” Parents in the neighborhood I grew up felt the very same way and I can tell you there weren’t car loads of anything but more white kids to be trucked in. So FUCKING sick of the color card being played.
OOH, dozens?! Dozens!! Really? Wow. Poor you and your whole community history of all-white suburban hard feelings. Sheesh.
And I’m so tired of it being dealt!!!🙄
And I’m so FUCIN tired of the Racist card being dealt!!!🙄
I recently moved out of the ‘hood, largely due to an overabundance of gun fire. The Halloween before, the neighborhood group got together and made a map of houses interested in handing out candy. In a square mile, there were roughly 10 houses. We got about 12 kids each of the 3 Halloweens we were there. It would have been awesome to have more kids, and it would have been safer. More kids, more parents outside, more people looking around to both appreciate what an amazing place we all had and to call the cops if crap did go down.
The people with the sign impoverish their own neighborhood, mostly by being massive buttholes, but also by discouraging activity in their area. Which street would you rather walk down- the one teeming with kids and parents having a great time, or the deserted one?
We moved to one of the streets where people truck in kids from all over. Imma be that house handing out full size whatchamacallits. Come knock!
AND WE WOULD BE THERE . BEING GRACIOUS AND THANKFUL. NOT EVERYONE FROM THE HOOD IS MISBEHAVED OR ILL MANNERED. I WAS RAISED IN ROUGH SPOTS AND I NEVER SAW A SHOOTING, GOT ROBBED..OR THOUGHT ABOUT BEING A GANG MEMBER. JUST PEOPLE TRYING TO SURVIVE AND BE HAPPY.
What a way to get your house egged / toilet paper’d..etc etc.
Wumble- Good point! Hadn’t thought about the “trick” part for quite some time.
I didn’t grow up in an absolute shithole, but a lot of kids in my city did. My parents still live in an area of town where we get a lot of “bus/van” kids showing up for Halloween. My dad once bitched about it until I told him that it wasn’t safe for kids in some areas to trick or treat. He later saw a story about a kid who got shot in the “bad part of town” for knocking on the wrong door during a trick or treat night.
After that, he never said anything about the issue.
I try never to say “fuck you” to strangers. But really! Fuck you, people.
When I was a kid, we trick or treated everywhere we could. It was the greatest thing ever. And no one ever turned us away or said we didn’t belong. Ever.
I confess that I’m the mean lady who turns her light out and hopes people respect that, but I have to go up and down stairs to answer the door, and that’s hard on my arthritic hips. Rest assured that when I move to a one-story place, my light will be on and we will welcome all trick-or-treaters.
making amerika white again. its KIDS you greedy well ditto head.
Hear hear!
To be… well, not fair, but to give a slightly larger picture, people grumped about this in my neighborhood growing up, and I lived in the lily-whitest small Wisconsin university town you could think of. Fuck, my neighborhood was where most of the non-whites (read: like two Hmong families) lived. And still some people bitched about people bringing in their (still white) kids from other, more spread out neighborhoods to come trick-or-treat in ours.
Several older people dealt with this by having small bags prepared for the kids they knew, and then bowls full of the cheap shit for the kids they didn’t, which got awkward when we’d go trick-or-treating as a large group of kids FROM THE NEIGHBORHOOD and like two got bags of full size candy bars and the rest were relegated to the tootsie roll pile.
So it might not be ENTIRELY racist. People get insular and suck for a wide variety of reasons.
My biggest problem isn’t with giving a kid you know an extra treat, it’s with turning the whole damn thing into a power trip and losing the perspective that it’s kids and candy. Hey, little Jimmy from next door, hold on a sec, I have a bag for you, versus I AM MAKING A PUBLIC DECLARATION OF HOW I DO NOT APPRECIATE OTHER HUMANS.
A.
MY FAMY LIVES IN LOWER INCOME AREA. MY KIDS ARE GREAT .AWESOME. THEIR HEARTS ARE SO FULL OF BEING KIND. NEVER ONCE HAS ANYONE.SAID THEY WERE ILL MANNERED. AND SOME.OF THESE ARE MAKING ME.SO ANGRY I WANT TO CRY. THANK YOU. FROM A FAMILY THAT TRAVELS TO ANOTHER NEIGHBORHOOD THAT ACTUALLY PARTICIPATES. FOR 20 yrs this family went to the same area. They smile and engage with us. It’s endearing. But some of these people are ignorant. I am done.too upsetting.
Because insular jackasses are insular jackasses and if they can’t divide and hate by race they’ll do it by religion or by ethnicity or by damn near anything they can.
Exactly. It’s not ENTIRELY racist. It’s just ENTIRELY SELFISH ASSHOLE-ist.
“When other neighborhoods send their kids, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending your kids. They’re not sending your kids. They’re sending kids that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good kids.”
Excuse me. Do not chunk.together groups of people you don’t know. We have worked over 20 years to give our girls the means to survive this life. What they don’t get in material things they got our love and time whenever they need it. While your child will throw that tantrum over not getting that 100th action figure, mine would.never ask unless they were told to pick a toy. They have hearts so kind. They are gracious and nice to those even.when it’s really hard. They would give a stranger their lunch if needed. Don’t call everyone a criminal, drug dealer, thugs,…I sent my kids outside to play and there never had issues with the other children. Should they battle?. Mess shut up …while middle class children learn how to behave towards anything different..I don’t blame them. I look to the adults. Really…drug dealers are trick.or treating.?.. a serial killer has the balls to knock and say trick or treat..it’s a stick up. While groups are walking in swarms outside. OK.
He was quoting Donald Trump, but replacing “Mexicans” with “Kids.”
I like seeing all of the kids… And this is happened in the last two neighborhoods in which we’ve lived. My only complaint are those parents who have never been to this neighborhood, and sometimes drive recklessly
And yes, we live in a very white neighborhood, with very few minorities… So that’s one way to tell. The other way is the fact that I don’t recognize them. Usually, I recognize most of the kids that live here because they go to the pool in the summer. But again, I am more than happy to buy extra candy and give it out, because I want to share our blessings with others
And this is what Halloween is about. Roaming about collecting candy. Happy for the chance since their own or our own neighbors don’t participate just because they cannot afford to not because they have problems with other kids entering. Just because a family is being raised in a less desirable area in no way means us parents forgot how to teach our children manners. They most likely are more thankful and gracious than the kids who never done without.
I live in a nice neighborhood, I got 8 kids this year!! 7 of them from out of my area and you know what?? I loved them. Sweetest kids ever, good manners, nice parents who stopped to chat with me. Those are the things that make my Halloween great. I was bummed there weren’t more children out. I guess my momma raised me right.
See…our neighbors don’t participate. So we have to go to another neighborhood. Nobody ever minded in 20 years. They cooed.over the newborn praised the others costumes and took time to engage. Kids were ecstatic. Now we some of these nice people..and they expect us. It great. Never an issue and never took.time to think it was a.problem
Who knew making children happy for an hour or so would make a human feel so nasty. These are innocent children not convicted serial killers. No love from Mommy I guess growing huh. Wow. So sad. Our country is based on. Helping your fellow man. Correct. It’s not a child’s fault the circumstances of their birth. But these kids probably get less materially but are shown love and how have empathy. What a asshole. We are trying to raise kids to know about being nice, helpful towards anyone who needs it, appearance and situations don’t matter. Can cold hearted human beings live in this America. But this letter moron had a right to just keep the light off. Nobody will ring the bell. Its common knowledge. Did you expect the majority to agree on this…they have rights to their opinions, but I say to keep them.to yourself if it hurts people who haven’t done one wrong thing personally to deserve this attack. Must realize kids just don’t stay in their neighborhood. It’s the fun of it. Where was this idiot raised?. I can’t anymore
Yes! I mean, personally, I go on a quote from Kevin Spacey, “When you ride the elevator to the top, it’s your duty to send it back down.” The same (or maybe especially) goes for kids! There are so many kids who don’t get candy very often, to begin with, let alone that fancy chocolate that’s in nice neighborhoods, so what gives someone the thought that they should be the candy gatekeepers? Socioeconomically disadvantaged kids need Hershey’s too, dammit.
Some people are jerks. I don’t have to guess at who this person is voting for in the Presidential election either.
Some people just suck.
We had a lot of people trick or treating in our neighborhood who don’t live on my street. They were having fun and I had fun handing out candy to them and I was tickled by the cute little 3 year old Hispanic boy in a firefighter outfit and it reminded me that little Hispanic kid wants to be a fireman just like little whitebread 3 year old down the street (and the little Hispanic kid probably WILL put in the hard work to actually be a fireman and hey, more power to him) . And if trick or treating in my neighborhood was safer than in the east Dallas neighborhood he actually lives in then I’m glad his Dad brought him and his brothers and sisters to our street. Why wouldn’t I be?
Seriously.
Why wouldn’t I be?
Bravo sir! Bravo!
*madame*
In the words of Mr. Rogers, “Won’t you be my neighbor?” Because I’m in 100% agreement.
You are awesome!!! That is exactly how I feel!! Halloween is about little kids in costumes trick or treating and everyone having a good time!! You get to meet so many interesting people that way!!
Hell, I don’t even mind the teenagers that come knocking.
Halloween is the only “holiday” everyone celebrates that isn’t even an official holiday. Not at the banks, not at the DMV, not anywhere. So it’s 100% “us” driven.
So I appreciate it as being all about us. The people like me and my wife who buy $20 worth of candy bags at Wal-Mart.
And the other people who dress up their kids and drive them halfway across town to trick or treat in the nice neighborhood where there’s aren’t random gunshots sounding out every night but especially on nights like Halloween.
Amd between us, we all get something out of it. My wife and I get to smile at kids who are having fun and are dressed up in neat costumes. We get to remember taking our girls trick or treating before they grew up and hand girls of their own.
And if I run out of candy I try to make sure it’s not until the teenagers are going up and down the street I’m hastily crabbed together “costumes” with pillowcases to hold their loot. I ration the candy now days because I’ve run out before with little kids still dropping by and that sucked. So now instead of holding out the bowl of candy and watching them grab double handfuls (because they’re kids, of course they’ll grab all the candy they can hold of offered a big bowl to grab out of!) now I grab one of each kind of candy and drop them in the bags for them.
I’m sure it comes across as a bit stingy but that’s okay. I know they’ll be going on to enough houses to get filled up good and proper. And I really hate running out early enough that little kids don’t get any.
I don’t get people being jerkoffs about this. I know, they’re mostly Republicans who equate Halloween candy with their precious tax dollars but, good grief, what small people they are. So very very small.
If I lived in a neighbourhood that kids were trucked into for trick or treating that would be awesome. Instead, I live in an area across town from such a place, and it kind of sucks when you only get two or three kids because they all get driven across town to get their treats. I understand that in cities there are neighbourhoods that are two dangerous for kids to go knocking on doors, but that isn’t always the case.
We had 5 kids this year. We handed out handsfull of candy and would have gone out and bought more if we had run out. We’d love it if people would bus in trick or treaters.
We have lights, we have decorations, we have inflatables. All we ask is that the kids join in the spirit of the night. No costume is too simple. Put a hankie on your head and wear and eye patch… bam… you’re a pirate.
Halloween is the night where you can let your imagination run free. It’s the night when we celebrate the fantastic and weirdly wonderful.
Bus ’em in, bring ’em on. Our door and our hearts are open to anyone and everyone who ventures out on this night of nights.
And to those tight ass fools who want to regulate who can visit them on all hallows eve… F’em.
It was great and I agreed…until you got race involved. Who said this was about race? When I was younger, probably around five or so, I lived in the run-down part of town. Here’s the twist: I’m white. And most of the town was white too. The first year of Halloween I remember we stayed in the house to hand out candy because it was safer, and we got a LOT of kids, crowds in front of our house. So yeah, maybe you shouldn’t assume the color of their skin.