Bill’s Bulletin Board

It’s an annual right of passage if you live in a house; having hoards of kids ring your doorbell Halloween night.

It wasn’t until I was living in my own house that I came to appreciate all the preparation that goes into this annual event, and one never knows until the end if they’ve been done right. The one thing I knew, as we waited Saturday for our first caller, was that I was the one who was going to take the credit or the blame for how the evening went.

My wife killed a bit of the time as we waited phoning her mother. I heard her discuss the preparations that we had made (living in a rural area, I suspect my mother-in-law does not fully understand what us urban types go through at this time of year). I heard Beth sum up the situation with the words, “Bill, he engineered it.”

If I hadn’t been feeling the pressure before that, I sure was by that point.

In the good old days, when I was a little kid, it was my mother who worried about the preparations, while I got the job of filling the bags, according to her exacting specifications. Then, I spent many years living in an apartment. In the buildings where I lived, the superintendent handed out the treats, which had been contributed by those tenants who had been so inclined. It must have been a function of my callow youth that I never pitch in to that.

I had to get married to a lass who persuaded me to the benefits of home ownership. Thus I went from the the serenity of apartment living to having to worry about being ready for Halloween. Lest you get the wrong idea, it was a learning curve for both of us. I had to worry about making sure we had treats for the kids coming to our door. Beth had to get used to the idea that we went overbudget on our grocery shopping throughout October in preparation.

And every year, it’s a crap shoot.

The first year we were in our house, I called some friends who reside in a development similar to ours, and asked them how many visitors we could realistically expect for Halloween. Two hundred was the reply I received, to my horror.

We didn’t go to that extreme that first year. We readied ourselves for about 100, and had about 30 come to our door. Figuring we had high-balled our estimate, the following year, we had treats for 70 kids and ran out in less than 45 minutes.

Well never let it be said that Bill and Beth can’t read a trend, so the next year, we were ready for upwards of 200. We also gave in to an inspiration to economize, thus we concentrated more on quantity, as opposed to quality. It was a hard lesson learned, as we only got about 50. That meant Beth and I were left with about 150 bags of the most hideous stuff, that we had to consume. Thus we got the message about being tightwads. From that day forward, we purchased Halloween treats with the understanding that Beth and I might end up having to eat the whole inventory.

We’ve guessed pretty well over the intervening years, setting up for about 100, varying one way or another, depending on the prevailing trends. And it worked, at least up until last year, when we just about ran out in less than an hour. We had a few bags remaining when Beth’s brother showed up with his two kids. Since our supply was just about gone, Beth and I elected to shut our operation down, and take our nephew and niece around the neighbourhood. When we returned to the house, our nephew, five at the time, saw the box with four or five remaining bags of treats, and quickly put him into his loot bag. I think we’re all impressed with such brazenness. I know I was.

Not wanting to run out again this year, we made sure we were set up for about 130 when it came time for kids to appear Saturday night.

And we waited

“Well, we haven’t had anyone yet,” Beth remarked at one point, asking me what the time was. It was 6:36.

“We haven’t got anybody yet,” she remarked a couple of minutes later, again asking me the time. It was 6:40.

“Nobody here’s yet,” she observed at 6:49. “What are we going to do if no one comes, with 130 bags of candy?”

I told her we’d worry about that bridge when we came to it. We never did. The door bell rang within a minute, and Beth was ordering me into action.

The next group arrived at 6:53

“They don’t seem to be at the same . . .” Beth said at 7:06, in the middle of a lull, followed by a pregnant pause.

“Clip?” I suggested.

“Yeah,” she replied, as we settled down to kill time waiting for the bell to ring by watching the hockey game.

“A Saturday night,” she said in a puzzled tone at 7:12. “You’d think they would be out in full force.”

The bell rang again within a minute.

At 7:23, I answered the door for a very young lady dressed as a dragon, and suddenly had a hint as to why our house might not be too popular. My nose caught the unmistakable indication that a skunk had been nearby.

No matter. Things did pick up again. And as the evening progressed and the hour grew later, I found myself (not for the first year) wondering how many of the boys coming to our door had started shaving.

In the end, we had 91 kids at our door, the last pair arriving at about 8:17 (in case you haven’t yet clued in, I keep track of the Halloween traffic flows, for reasons I doubt I could ever explain.

“We have too many bags of candy left,” Beth said when the festivities were all done for another year.

What could I have said?

“I’ll try to improve myself, dear.”

I don’t know what subsequent reports Beth gave her mother.