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.