Halloween

So, I've told a few people that I'm not very into Halloween.  I don't do much to celebrate the holiday and I try to let it pass by with as little involvement as possible.  I don't live in an area where kids go trick-or-treating, and  a lot of the traditions seem silly to this old-man-in-training.

But it wasn't always that way.   When I was a kid, Halloween was the coolest.  I trick-or-treated and two of my neighbors established an outdoor haunted house every year.  And when I was old enough I worked at the haunted house.  I got braces on Halloween and I could eat without difficulty until trick-or-treating time, and I was devastated.  But that didn't shake my appreciation for Halloween.

When I was in high school, there was a workplace shooting near my town, at the office of one of my neighbors who ran the haunted house, and he was killed.  After that, it was too hard for the neighborhood to host the haunted house.  And Halloween became a sad day for me.  And it's still sad.  The joy I used to associate with community on Halloween was transformed to mourning.  So, forgive me if I'm not full of holiday spirit.