TheCorporateCounsel.net

When I was writing the blog last year around this time, I lamented that I really miss Halloween. I noted that once my kids aged out of trick-or-treating and I moved to a scary house at the end of a long driveway in a dark forest, I was no longer able to enjoy the holiday as I once did, and I now find myself attending to professional obligations on Halloween rather than dressing up in a ridiculous costume and littering my yard with over-the-top decorations. I received some great feedback on that blog, as others in our community recounted the same estranged relationship with Halloween, or expressed the fear that their own enjoyable times during Halloween were about to come to an end.

In my ode to Halloween today, I recount my top five takeaways from the holiday that stick with me to this day:

1. Embrace the creativity – I can distinctly remember being ten years old and making a Darth Vader costume out of a football helmet and some black construction paper in the year when the first Star Wars movie premiered, and being very satisfied with my handiwork. I am sure that the adults who answered the door when I was trick-or-treating were scratching their heads, wondering what the heck my costume was supposed to be. Fast forward thirty years later, and I found myself making a very realistic R2D2 costume out of white plastic trash can for my son, who was just as fascinated with Star Wars as I was in 1977. Once again, I was very satisfied with my handiwork, although this time the adults definitely recognized the costume!

2. Trust, but verify – A lasting impression from my childhood Halloween excursions was the process of pouring all of the candy onto the floor and closely inspecting the pieces for tampering, usually looking for inserted razor blades for some reason. The message from this exercise was clear – sure, we trust you to go out and beg for candy from the neighbors, but we don’t trust them enough to let you eat uninspected candy. This bit of childhood trauma was only confirmed when I was trick-or-treating with a group of friends and we knocked on the door of a house where a 1970s-style teen party was occurring, and the person answering the door said to his friends, “there are some trick-or-treaters here, let’s give them some drugs.” Needless to say, these Halloween experiences helped formulate a worldview that not everyone out there is looking out for my best interests.

3. Have fun, but consider others – Today, the focus of Halloween festivities is on the “treat,” but not the “trick.” As a lad, I must admit that I engaged in my fair share of the “trick” part of trick-or-treating, which never involved anything particularly malicious or destructive, but was no doubt quite annoying. In today’s world of doorbell cameras and iPhones, we certainly never would have gotten away with those shenanigans. Now that I have entered what I like to call the “get off my lawn” phase of my life, I truly regret having given into the temptation and peer pressure that led to the “trick” part of “trick-or-treating.”

4. Choose your costume carefully – Several years ago, I was driving my son and his college freshmen roommates around Washington DC trying to find Halloween costumes on Halloween-eve, only to find that all of the stores were completely cleaned out. We finally found a costume store in the suburbs that was fully stocked, but the freshmen had a very hard time selecting their costumes. This was at a time (which could still be the case today) when a number of people were being called out on social media and in the news for Halloween costumes that they once wore long ago, and it had the in terrorem effect of making all Halloween costumes seem potentially problematic to somebody. We eventually got the group outfitted, but it took a while! In any event, I think it is much better to be safe than sorry, because it is really not worth offending someone when you are just wearing a silly costume as a grown adult on Halloween.

5. Enjoy the moment – While I was working in demanding jobs and had a long commute when my kids were young, I would always make it a priority to get home before the trick-or-treating commenced, because the kids would always be so excited about the holiday. While it can be stressful at times to try to make everything happen in that one evening, it was always worth the effort to see their smiles and to hear their laughter as we navigated the spooky sights around the neighborhood. It was also nice to see all of the neighbors out and about and being friendly in a way that did not usually occur on all of the other days of the year. If you are still in the mode of celebrating Halloween with your family and neighbors, I encourage you to enjoy those moments while you still can!

Happy Halloween!

– Dave Lynn