Halloween: Frugal Costumes Bring in Record Hauls

I will say right now, I’m not a big fan of Hal­loween. I hate the com­mer­cial­ism. I’m not big on the scary stuff or the gore. I don’t like the con­cen­tra­tion on candy or kids walk­ing around after dark. And I despise the very con­cept of pay­ing hard-earned dol­lars on incred­i­bly tacky and over-commercialized store-bought cos­tumes.  If that makes me a grouch or a party-pooper, then so be it. Bah Hum­bug, I say.

But no mat­ter how I feel about Hal­loween; my kids enjoy the hol­i­day.  The Son in particular.  In fact, it is The Son who cre­ates the lit­tle bit of enjoy­ment I derive from the holiday.

The Son is all about the candy and sev­eral years ago he fig­ured out how to max­i­mize his take.  The key, he says, is to appeal to the adults hand­ing out the candy.  And the best way to appeal to adults is to appeal to their sense of humor.  If any­one knows how to appeal to an adult’s sense of humor, The Son does.

Two years ago, The Son decided to dress as the scari­est thing he could think of — a phone bill (pic­tured above).  Adults loved his cos­tume and rewarded him with extra hand­fuls of candy.  They’d take one look at The Son and hoot and hol­lar and call all the other adults in the house to come see it.  Any­way, The Son ate it up.

Last year, feel­ing a lit­tle inse­cure about whether or not he was too old to Trick or Treat and hav­ing pro­cras­ti­nated until the very last minute, he grabbed a piece of card­board, a large Sharpie, and wrote “This is a cos­tume.”  Again, the adults loved it and rewarded him with extra serv­ings of sugar.

This year The Son (now 14) con­tin­ued his tra­di­tion of appeal­ing to adults.   He expanded on last year’s cardboard-sign theme and, to me, demon­strated a slightly higher degree of sophis­ti­ca­tion.  He also took in a record haul.  Would you believe he came home with 13.5 pounds of candy!?!

Funny thing is, a cou­ple of years ago I would have freaked at the idea of him hav­ing that much candy.  But he’s older and I’m wiser and I under­stand now that, for him, it’s the game.  The chal­lenge.  The pos­i­tive feed­back.  Oh, sure, he’ll eat some, maybe even a large por­tion of the candy over the next sev­eral months.  I’ll take steps to limit how much he eats per day keep­ing in mind that he’s likely to sneak a piece or two now and then.

How­ever, how much candy he con­sumes is not the point here.  The point is that The Son took in a record haul of candy because he designed a fru­gal and home-made cos­tume that appealed to his audi­ence.  He said one fel­low loved his sign so much that he upended his entire bowl of candy into The Son’s bag.  For The Son, a quirky and painfully shy ado­les­cent, Hal­loween rep­re­sents the lion’s share of the extra-familial pos­i­tive feed­back he’ll receive all year.

I wasn’t home for any of this evening’s events (the hand­ing out of candy at home by The Hus­band or the col­lect­ing of candy by The Son) — as I was busy dri­ving a car­load of kids in from the boon­docks of our fine state.  When I finally returned home, this is what greeted me just inside the front door.  The Son was truly in rare form this year.  I won­der what he’ll use as inspi­ra­tion next year since we won’t have the elec­tion as a source of material?

Related posts:

1. Bagels & Shmear
2. $$: Star­bucks, Pizza & an ani­mated Zombie-Hand-in-a-Bowl
3. $$: Choco­late Milk, Choco­late Candy & Snow Pants, etc.
4. Day 105: A Busy, Budget-Busting Day in the ‘Burbs
5. Day 188: Tide, Tam­pax, & Cargo Shorts