TRICK OR TREAT OR VOTE



Today, October 31, all little kids are sitting in agony as the school day crawls by. On their minds are the plans made days ago about Halloween. The routes to cover for trick-or-treating” are plotted, and costumes are laid out and ready for donning. It’s a big night for them.
            I’ve heard adults and children alike claim that Halloween is their favorite day, and I just don’t get it. Sure, there’s plenty of candy to be taken in bags and plastic pumpkins and even pillow cases. Yes, kids have some fantastic costumes that parents purchased from stores or that moms spent hours designing. Of course, yards are decorated with assortments of creepy, scary things to bring the perfect setting to the night for witches and ghosts and goblins. Still, I don’t get it.
            When did Halloween become such an important event? It doesn’t seem that long ago that the night was characterized by a carved pumpkin sitting on the front steps, a porch light glowing, and “take two pieces of candy” instructions from homeowners. Those treats were for small children; no adult would give a teenager a single piece of candy but would instead tell the big kids to go home and behave.
Some older kids sneaked around neighborhoods to snatch Jack O’Lanterns and smash them on roads. High school kids took the opportunity to re-decorate friends and enemies’ yards with rolls of toilet paper, and sometimes they soaped windows or “egged” the siding and roofs. Most of the mischief was in the name of innocent fun.
Too many folks are intent upon scaring the stuffing out of kids and grown-ups. Staged yard scenes are filled with fake severed body parts and blood, and the more realistic the scene appears, the better people like it. Kids don’t dare eat any treat that isn’t hermetically sealed, a fact that prevents little ones from ever enjoying a homemade cookie or popcorn ball or fried pie made by a sweet little neighborly grandmother.
Nope, I just don’t get it. Something else frightens me much worse, however, and it’s coming on the heels of our national scary day. It’s the upcoming election. Our nation is counting down the days until we once again choose a leader. Over the last year we’ve witnessed debates, conventions, and nonstop campaigning. Super PAC’s have entered the fray and spent millions while spewing their own one-sided venom in ads. Voters are immune to the name-calling and half-truths after so much exposure. Most of us just want it over.
The fear comes in after the election is over. Our country faces lots of problems, and whoever becomes the next president faces tough decisions. Are taxes to be lowered? Will entitlements be cut? Is the country’s debt going to continue to increase? All of that comes with the biggest concern of all. It centers on a congress that is unwilling to work together to fix the problems. Partisan politics is practiced in spite of the plight of the country. So while both sides “fiddle” their ideology, the country burns. Yes what’s more horrible than any Halloween costume or movie or front yard set-up is an election that looks to bring with it no change to the same old politics of doing nothing.
I hope I’m wrong. It would be better to have Halloween as a fun time for children than to have an election that brings with it the fear of a broken government. A child’s “trick or treat” is an innocent sound to which we adults give sweet rewards. The same line from our government might signal the downfall of a mighty nation.
Whichever way your political views might lean, make sure they count. Don’t yell “trick or treat.” VOTE!

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