Friday, October 31, 2008

Happy Halloween Regionalism?!

Some nostalgia today for our first year in the program. Tell me some good jokes, or your best Halloween costume, trick, memory. (I meant to post this this morning, but I've been busy. First trick or treaters just arrived at the new digs in NM.) I guess my best or funniest Halloween memories are my brother getting busted for taking a hatchet to some old guy's tree (my brother was Jason that year), or me going as Richard Nixon, wearing one of my dad's suits, at ten years old, and telling an Alzheimer's joke. Today I had a Chinese Emperor, crunk dancer and Samurai Warrior in my classes.

H20 update**So all these kids are coming to my door sticking their hands out, and I keep saying, "What?! What's your trick?" or, "Do you have a joke for me?" See, growing up in my neck of the suburban woods, you had to earn your candy. Apparently not so in the great Southwest. I stressed over my trick or treat joke every year, even the Alzheimer's one. We absolutely HAD to tell a joke before we got our piece of candy. I need to know if this is/was regional, suburban, old, pagan, whatever. I'm totally pissed that I can't even laugh tonight but instead have to make kids cry even though I'm giving them candy.

2 comments:

cdee said...

You've told me of the practice of joke telling for candy; I never had to do it.

Sarah said...

It's funny that you wrote this because James was just telling me the other thing the other day about earning your candy.

He even gets separate bags of candy--good and bad--for this practice. So it may be a Texas thing, too. I know in California, we had to say "trick or treat" -- that was it.

We had about twenty trick-or-treaters on Friday and almost all of them stuck out their hands without saying anything at all. The ones who did said "happy halloween" not "trick or treat".

I'm with you. Ungrateful little bastards.

Although, my favorite was a SIX year old kid who showed up at my door wearing a McCain mask. I said, "You supposed to be Senator McCain?" And he said, "Yeah, but the funny thing is, I'm for Obama."