Age knows no limits at trick-or-treat time

I think the kids know when they're too old, but Mom and Dad don't want to admit their little Spider-man has grown up and would rather be going to a teen party dressed as a Halo video game character -- without them hovering in the shadows to protect him.

"Oh, come on, " I told Scott, when he was 16. "Dress up as the Jolly Green Giant. You'll be so cute!"

"Ummm," he said. "No."

Of course, the main reason I wanted the two older boys to dress up long past their spandex expiration date was because I wanted them to take Buzz around the neighborhood so I could stay home in the nice, warm house. Yeah yeah, I know you're all tsk-tsking about me not wanting to share this fun experience with my youngest child, blah blah blah, but the fact is, I shared it with the two older brothers plenty and have the frostbite to prove it.

It's a moot point anyway, since the oldest brothers were way too cool to be seen hauling the baby bro around, much less do it wearing a costume, and the middle son has to work that night.

Ben, however, is an actor. Give him a costume and you've given him an instant ticket to euphoria. As long as there's a mask, cape or stage makeup in a 10-mile radius, this child will never do drugs -- he gets his rush from donning secret identities.

He wanted to go to this National Honor Society party as Jack Skellington from Nightmare Before Christmas. He's tall, skinny, and a little creepy in a funny way, so it was a perfect fit. Ben developed this elaborate plan for how he would paint his face black and white to emulate the grinning skull, and he'd draw white lines on the black suit jacket we got at Goodwill to make it look pinstriped, and he'd have to find a way to pack his rapunzel hair into a bald cap, but then he'd have to paint the bald cap white to look like a skull ...

I finally interrupted him.

"Or, you could just buy the Jack Skellington mask they've got at Hastings ..."

"That's no fun!"

When I was their age, everyone had homemade costumes -- only the rich kids could afford the store bought ones. Why spend money on something you only wear one night, after all? Luckily, my mom loved to sew, so I got to be an Indian maiden (Native American in the politically correct translation for the modern era), a princess, and the Easter Bunny. As we got older, she put less into the costumes and we put more. We were hippies, hoboes and mummies, depending on how many love beads we could steal from our sister's jewelry box, how badly Dad would let us mangle his old ties and dress pants, and how much toilet paper we could sneak out when Mom wasn't looking.

It was kind of a weaning process -- the older we got, the less effort Mom put into our costumes and the more we had to do ourselves. At about 12, the laziness factor and the embarrassed teenager factor collided head on and we gave up trick or treating. There were long, dull years between then and college. At college, we discovered new kinds of costume parties. I don't think my mother would have approved of the Halloween I ran around as Columbia from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, or the party I went to as Jodie Foster (Yale sweatshirt and a handful of letters from John Hinckley Jr.), but then, she didn't have to make the costumes, did she?

We actually trick or treated those years. In the girls' dorms, we either got fat-free yogurt snacks or the really good stuff -- Reese's cups. In the guys' dorms, it was generic Halloween candy, and at the frat houses, it was shooters and beer. In the dorm that hosted the "Whiteball" court, you could get ... nope. Not going to incriminate my classmates, no matter how funny it was. Whiteball was handball played against the walls of White dorm. The players have gone on to sire hacky-sackers, snowboarders and others who believe "thrash" is actually a sports term. (One of those players, however, just had his special work project launched to the Space Station. WTG Scott Budzien!)

After college, there were the "grownup" Halloween parties, and I say that tongue-in-cheek. When you see a 6-6 future mayor doing cheers in a long blonde wig and six 16 high heels, you have to wonder just how grown up it all is... There's not as much candy, but a lot more beer -- and much better costumes. I don't usually see adults in store-bought costumes, although there are some who get the higher-end rental costumes. Some of the best costumes are homemade and rely on clever over cost. There was the Black-Eyed Pea, the Crow Vomit, the Rock Lobster... costumes that I or my family members have seen and passed into Halloween history as The Best Costume Ever. (Unfortunately some of the best of these were also the most tasteless and I can't even begin to list them here.)

Can we outgrow Halloween? The one night a year we can pretend to be 10 and terrified again? The one night a year we can act a little silly and dress a little weird and not be suspected of raising 183 cats in our laundry room? Sure, we can outgrow it if we want to. I just don't want to.

But can we outgrow trick or treating? Um...yeah. When you can't eat half the candies because they clog your arteries, get stuck in your dentures or interfere with your blood pressure medicine, it's probably time to hang up the goodie bag. This is why we drag our kids into the tradition -- we get the vicarious thrills of sneaking around the shadows, ringing doorbells, pretending to be a superhero or spectre in the night. And when those kids dig their feet in and say "No more!" just remember -- there are always grandkids down the line ...

-- Mary Reeves is a Times-Gazette staff writer. She can be reached at mreeves@t-g.com.