If a fingernail clipper is misplaced, why do fingernails take advantage of the situation, growing longer with each passing day like a sorcerer in a scary movie?
Pointing an index finger at no one in particular, I conjure up thoughts for an unsettling, if not terrifyingly mediocre post.
The evil in this missive is not poor grammar, although poor grammar is allowed to escape my editors’ scrutiny at this time of year. These editors are all volunteers. They can be forgiven when their work bears out I’m getting what I pay for.
One of the reasons I love Halloween is that it coincides with cooler weather that’s finally descended upon the lower 48. The departure of warm temperatures, the increase in the autumn wind, and Mother Nature combine to bring rustling leaves and glances over shoulders. The leaves blow by each of us. Their cryptic sounds are indecipherable.
The calendar turn brings horror movies by the dozens. They prompt thoughts of the candied abundance of tricker treaters past.
The end of the innocence
It should be an entirely innocent early period in their lives.
But the news media broke the story of razor blades appearing in trick or treaters’ bags.
The little ghouls emptied their bags and checked the contents carefully.
Fortunately, most never found any razor blades.
The stage was set however for the end of the innocent age of trick or treating.
Organized trick or treating ensued.
It was no longer a kid-inspired holiday.
Grown-ups, nothing more than big kids themselves, became involved in the entire holiday’s proceedings–after they finished their day’s work of course.
They went with the tots and tiny people from door to door, casting a discerning eye when adults dropped apples into their children’s treat bags instead of packaged, processed candy. The fear of razor blades being inside the apples grew anew.
At least they had the benefit of the previous year’s transgressions. They would look to dissect and perform surgery on their children’s apples as necessary.
I wonder how many kids of this era who grew into adults still slice their apples to eat instead of just biting into them.
I also wonder if any of them back then thought anything as intelligent as artificial intelligence could ever come to pass.
Trick or treating in the age of AI
Fast forward to current days and the lurking, omnipresent plague that is Uncle Covid. One could say it’s Halloween all year long now.
Still, parents are pressing on with plans to trick or treat carefully, whatever that means, requires, or entails.
Trick or treating’s definition has never been to go door to door unsafely. Yet, that is what some epidemiologists are suggesting it will be if tried at all this year.
Sure, you can stay home and watch a horror movie about a beast that just won’t die, like a vampire. But like a stake through a vampire’s heart, Uncle Covid is at least somewhat thwarted by the presence of masks. Social distancing does not seem to be a requirement any longer. Southwest Airlines is selling middle seats again, saying science and their statistics prove you are as likely to have Uncle Covid catch up to you inside of one of their planes as you are to be struck by lightning.
A lot of people don’t walk outside when it’s storming. I figure some of them won’t fly Southwest anymore, either.
Silly me.
I guess the scariest thing no matter the time period one lives in is not knowing something for sure.