Today is Halloween, and I think of my granddaughters and the fun they'll have at four and seven. One is being a fairy and the other a veterarian. Yesterday, my husband said he couldn't really remember Halloween and what he did. I realized I couldn't remember what I dressed up as, but remember running around our town and throwing toilet paper on bushes and trees. I was a little mini vandal, but so were all the kids in the tiny towns I grew up in. We had complete physical freedom, and aimless, exuberant energy. There were often parties and kids' houses. I think I've forgotten my costuming because those memories have been superceded by my kids' costumes, which I mostly remember. And by the time my kids were born, the world was a scarier place, and we were more closely supervising them out of necessity. I had one rule: no trick or treating after age 12. My parents had that rule also, and luckily, there were parties or sleepovers to celebrate, without the kids becoming thugs instead of little kids having fun. Being 12 to 18 is so hard in so many ways. You don't want to give up the perks of being a little kid, you have all this wild energy, and you have no adult priviledges either. I think most teenagers envy trick or treaters, the innocence, being really scared by silly things, the joy. It can feel like all the fun is sucked out of life. What a rough time of life!
Today is also the Giants parade for the world series. I won't go, but it has some similarities with Halloween. Grown people will try to celebrate like children, and some will become angry children, because baseball is a fantasy of childhood, and these are adult times. Some of the fans yearn a bit to hard for a long ago time, when life was simple and winning was doable, a myth, but allluring. And their disappointment at adulthood may rise to the surface. We'll see.
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